10. [Acer leucoderme] Small. Sugar Maple.
Leaves usually truncate or slightly cordate at base, more or less deeply divided into 3—5 acute caudate-acuminate lobes coarsely and sinuately dentate or undulate, when they unfold coated below with long matted pale caducous hairs, and at maturity thin, dark yellow-green above, bright yellow-green and pilose-pubescent below, 2′—3½′ in diameter; often turning in the autumn bright scarlet on the upper surface before falling; petioles slender, glabrous, 1′—1½′ in length. Flowers yellow, about ⅛′ long, on slender, glabrous pedicels, in nearly sessile clusters; calyx campanulate, glabrous or slightly villose, with rounded ciliate lobes; corolla 0; stamens 7 or 8; filaments villose, longer than the calyx, much shorter than the calyx in the pistillate flower; ovary villose; style elongated, with short spreading lobes. Fruit villose, with long scattered pale hairs until nearly grown, becoming glabrous at maturity, the wings wide-spreading or divergent, ½′—¾′ long; seeds smooth, light red-brown, about ¼′ long.
A tree, usually 20°—25° high, with a trunk a foot in diameter, occasionally 40° high, with a trunk 18′—20′ in diameter, short slender branches forming a rather compact round-topped head, and slender glabrous branchlets dark green when they first appear, becoming bright red-brown and lustrous during their first summer, and marked by numerous small oblong pale lenticels, gradually growing darker in their second year and finally light gray-green. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, dark brown, glabrous, rather more than 1/16′ long, the inner scales becoming bright crimson and very conspicuous when the tree is in flower. Bark of young stems and large branches close, light gray or grayish brown, becoming near the base of old trees dark brown or often nearly black and broken by deep furrows into narrow ridges covered by closely appressed scales.
Distribution. Banks of streams, rocky gorges, and woods in moist soil; valley of the Yadkin River, Stanley County, North Carolina; southeastern Tennessee (Polk County); valley of the Savannah River (Abbeville County, South Carolina, and Richmond County, Georgia) to central and northwestern Georgia (near Rome, Floyd County, and Walker County) and to the valley of the Chattahoochee River to Muscogee County; northern and central Alabama; western Louisiana (Natchitoches and Sabine Parishes); southern Arkansas (Baker Springs, Howard County); rare and local; most abundant in northwestern and central Georgia and northern Alabama.
Occasionally planted as a street tree in the towns of northern Georgia and Alabama; hardy as far north as eastern Massachusetts.
11. [Acer saccharinum] L. Silver Maple. Soft Maple.
Leaves truncate or somewhat cordate at base, deeply 5-lobed by narrow sinuses, with acute irregularly and remotely dentate lobes, the middle lobe often 3-lobed, 6′—7′ long and nearly as broad, thin, bright pale green above, silvery white and at first slightly hairy below, especially in the axils of the primary veins; turning pale yellow in the autumn before falling; petioles slender, drooping, bright red, 4′—5′ in length. Flowers greenish yellow, opening during the first warm days of the late winter or early spring long before the appearance of the leaves, on short pedicels, in sessile axillary fascicles on shoots of the previous year, or on short spur-like branchlets developed the year before from wood of the preceding season, the staminate and pistillate in separate clusters, on the same or on different trees, and produced from clustered obtuse buds covered with thick ovate pubescent red and green scales ciliate on the margins with a thick fringe of long rufous hairs; calyx slightly 5-lobed, more or less pubescent on the outer surface, long and narrow in the staminate and short and broad in the pistillate flower; corolla 0; stamens 3—7, with slender filaments, three times as long as the calyx of the staminate flower and about as long as the calyx of the pistillate flower; ovary covered, like the young fruit, with a thick coat of pubescence, rudimentary in the sterile flower; styles united at base only, with long exserted stigmatic lobes. Fruit ripening in April and May when the leaves are nearly grown, on slender drooping pedicels, 1½′—2′ long, glabrous, 1½′ to nearly 3′ long, with thin almost straight conspicuously falcate divergent wings sometimes ¾′ broad, prominently reticulate-veined and pale chestnut-brown or rarely bright red; seeds ½′ long, with a pale reddish brown wrinkled coat, germinating as soon as they fall to the ground, and producing plants with several pairs of leaves before the end of the summer.
A tree, 90°—120° high, with a trunk 3°—4° in diameter, generally dividing 10°—15° from the ground into 3 or 4 stout upright secondary stems destitute of branches for a considerable length, brittle pendulous branchlets light green and covered with lenticels when they first appear, soon becoming darker, bright chestnut-brown, smooth and lustrous in the autumn and winter of their first year, and in their second season pale rose color or gray faintly tinged with red. Winter-buds ⅛′ long, with thick ovate bright red outer scales rounded on the back, minutely apiculate, and ciliate on the margins, and acute inner scales pubescent on the inner surface, becoming pale green or yellow and about 1′ long. Bark of young stems and large branches smooth and gray faintly tinged with red, becoming on old trunks ½′—¾′ thick, reddish brown and more or less furrowed, the surface separating into large thin scales. Wood hard, strong, close-grained, easily worked, rather brittle, pale brown, with thick sapwood of 40—50 layers of annual growth; now sometimes used for flooring and in the manufacture of furniture. Sugar is occasionally made from the sap.