Carpentry and Woodwork

by Edwin W. Foster

Probably the best known and most common trees, especially in towns and cities. Most of them grow quickly and therefore become valuable as shade trees. They do not make the most permanent trees, however, and should be planted in alternation with oaks, or other long-lived trees, for permanent shade.

The seeds of all maples are winged, which helps their distribution over large areas, in the same manner as the seeds of evergreens.

Sugar or Rock Maple.—The most valuable timber tree of the group, its wood being heavy, hard, strong, and close-grained. Very light in colour and valuable for flooring and interior finish, furniture, tool handles, and bench tops.

It grows throughout the Eastern states, but not in all soils. Very rapid in growth, so much so that in the dense forest stands, when a portion of the woods has been cut down, the young saplings cannot always withstand the wind pressure and are blown down. Reaches a height in the forest of a hundred and twenty feet, but in the open is broader and more symmetrical. Too much cannot be said in praise of this tree. Its shade is dense and its autumn colouring superb. The sap yields maple syrup and sugar, and, finally, after it has done its work and is cut down, its wood yields lumber of the highest value, while the limbs make excellent firewood.

The process of making maple sugar was learned, historians tell us, from the Indians. This is probably why the process was for two or three centuries very crude. Holes are bored in the tree in the late winter, as soon as the sap is brought to life by the sun, usually in March, but the time depends upon the weather. Spigots are placed in the holes and pails hung under them to catch the sap. When full, they are emptied into large kettles or boilers over a fire, and the sap simply boiled down to the proper consistency.

As the lumberman is making heavy inroads into the maple groves or forests, the price of maple sugar is likely to continue going up, until real maple sugar will be only a memory, unless we wake up from our dream of unlimited resources to the real facts and do something.

Silver Maple, White Maple, Soft Maple.—A very common shade tree in our towns and cities. Its natural section is along the Mississippi, where it becomes a great tree, often a hundred feet high; but it is so easily adaptable to new conditions, grows so quickly from seed, and will stand so much hard usage that it has been very popular. There are many better trees, but this is cheap and quick growing, and in our hurried American life we build very often for the immediate future and forget the next generation.

Its foliage, when not blackened and spoiled by the smoke of the city, is a beautiful dark green above, and light silvery green below. The winged seeds ripen in June, may be planted before July 1st, and will produce young trees nearly a foot high before frost of the same season. Wood not as hard as rock maple, but strong, close-grained and brittle. Used to some extent in cabinet work. The winter buds are very precocious and start into life at the first sign of spring.

Red or Swamp Maple.—Found in wet places naturally, but it makes a large and satisfactory shade tree in heavy upland soil. The leaf form is somewhat like that of the silver maple, but smaller.

Seeds ripen before summer. The flowers are red, the leaf stems are red, and the foliage is not only the most brilliant red of all our autumn colours, but it is the first to give notice by its change of the approach of winter. It is easy to see where it got its name.