proportion to its top, and on removing a piece of bark the surface of the wood is found to be covered with wart-like swellings. The figure is best on the outside, falling off as the heart is approached. In order to show it, the log is cut on a lathe, which slices off a thin shaving all round, producing what is called a knife-cut veneer. The bird’s-eye variety may be detected by small pits in the bark, usually inconspicuous, which correspond to small pits all over the wood, and, like the other, has a head usually small as compared with the trunk.
Maple wood also shows when cut radially a very fine silver grain, which to my eye is almost as beautiful as the other figures. The colour is normally white, but when the trees are old assumes a pink or reddish tint. It is also very much used in its plain form for shipbuilding, flooring, and all purposes where strength, durability, and close texture are required, and is largely imported in the form of prepared blocks, which, when properly fitted and laid, make a durable good floor.
Maple sugar, usually, though not always, the produce of Acer saccharum, is derived, by boiling, from the sap which flows from the tree in spring. Though it is in the opinion of most people one of the best kinds of sugar known, and, especially in the form of syrup eaten with buckwheat cakes, is one of the most favourite of American table delicacies ; it is so little known to English readers that we do not think it necessary to describe the process of manufacture, which has been given at length by Loudon, Michaux, and other writers on American trees.’ An article on this subject was published in Kew Bull., 1895, p. 127; and an interesting letter on the domestic uses of maple sugar and maple syrup, by Miss Boyle of Maywood, New Jersey, appeared in The Garden, lxv. 152 (1904). (H.J.E.)
ACER MACROPHYLLUM, Oregon Maple
- Acer macrophyllum, Pursh, Fl. Amer. Sept. i. 267 (1814); Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. i. 408 (1838); Sargent, Silva N. Amer. ii. 89, tt. 86, 87 (1892), and Trees N. Amer. 628 (1905).
A tree attaining in America 130 feet in height and 15 feet in girth. Bark of old trees thick, rough, deeply furrowed, and broken on the surface into small plate-like scales. Young branchlets glabrous, green, remaining green or becoming dark red in their first winter. Leaves (Plate 205, Fig. 3) very large, averaging 9 inches in breadth and length, deeply and usually narrowly cordate at the base; lobes five, with acute or acuminate apex, and large triangular lobules or teeth; sinuses deep, extending more than half-way the length of the blade, rounded at the base; margin ciliate; upper surface dark green, shining, scattered pubescent; lower surface light green, glabrescent between the nerves, with tufts of white pubescence in the axils; petiole with milky sap.
1 The most complete account is given in U.S. Dept. Agric., Forestry Bulletin No. 59; The Maple Sugar Industry, by Fox and Hubbard, Washington, 1905. Cf. also U.S. Dept. Agric., Forest Service, Circular 95 (1907), which gives notes on the cultivation and economic uses of the sugar maple.
