This is not a botanical disquisition; it is not a complete account of all the members of the important tree family of maples. I am not a botanist, nor a true scientific observer, but only a plain tree-lover, and I have been watching some trees bloom and bud and grow and fruit for a few years, using a camera now and then to record what I see and much more than I see, usually!

In the sweet springtime, when the rising of the sap incites some to poetry, some to making maple sugar, and some to watching for the first flowers, it is well to look at a few tree-blooms, and to consider the possibilities and the pleasures of a peaceful hunt that can be made with profit in city street or park, as well as along country roadsides and in the meadows and the woods.

Who does not know of the maples that are all around us? Yet who has seen the commonest of them bloom in very early spring, or watched the course of the peculiar winged seed-pods or “keys” that follow the flowers? The white or “silver” maple of streets or roadsides, the soft maple of the woods, is one of the most familiar of American trees. Its rapid and vigorous growth endears it to the man who is in a hurry for shade, and its sturdy limbs are the joy of the tree-butcher who “trims” them short in later years.

Watch this maple in very early spring even before spring is any more than a calendar probability and a singular bloom will be found along the slender twigs. Like little loose-haired brushes these flowers are, coming often bravely in sleet and snow, and seemingly able to “set” and fertilize regardless of the weather. They hurry through the bloom-time, as they must do to carry out the life-round, for the graceful two-winged seeds that follow them are picked up and whirled about by April winds, and, if they lodge in the warming earth, are fully able to grow into fine little trees the same season. Examine these seed-pods, keys, or sámaras (this last is a scientific name with such euphony to it that it might well become common!), and notice the delicate veining in the translucent wings. See the graceful lines of the whole thing, and realize what an abundant provision Dame Nature makes for reproduction, for a moderate-sized tree completes many thousands of these finely formed, greenish yellow, winged sámaras, and casts them loose for the wind to distribute during enough days to secure the best chances of the season.

This same silver maple is a bone of contention among tree-men, at times. Some will tell you it is “coarse”; and so it is when planted in an improper place upon a narrow street, allowed to flourish unrestrained for years, and then ruthlessly cropped off to a headless trunk! But set it on a broad lawn, or upon a roadside with generous room, and its noble stature and grace need yield nothing to the most artistic elm of New England. And in the deep woods it sometimes reaches a majesty and a dignity that compel admiration. The great maple at Eagles Mere is the king of the bit of primeval forest yet remaining to that mountain rest spot. It towers high over mature hemlocks and beeches, and seems well able to defy future centuries.

But there is another very early maple to watch for, and it is one widely distributed in the Eastern States. The red or scarlet maple is well named, for its flowers, not any more conspicuous in form than those of its close relation, the silver maple, are usually bright red or yellow, and they give a joyous color note in the very beginning of spring’s overture. Not long are these flowers with us; they fade, only to be quickly succeeded by even more brilliant sámaras, a little more delicate and refined than those of the silver maple, as well as of the richest and warmest hue. Particularly in New England does this maple provide a notable spring color showing.

The leaves of the red maple it is also the swamp maple of some localities as they open to the coaxing of April sun and April showers, have a special charm. They are properly red, but mingled with the characteristic color is a whole palette of tints of soft yellow, bronze and apricot. As the little baby leaflets open, they are shiny and crinkly, and altogether attractive. One thinks of the more aristocratic and dwarfed Japanese maples, in looking at the opening of these red-brown beauties, and it is no pleasure to see them smooth out into sedate greenness. Again, in fall, a glory of color comes to the leaves of the red maple; for they illumine the countryside with their scarlet hue, and, as they drop, form a brilliant thread in the most beautiful of all carpets that of the autumn leaves. I think no walk in the really happy days of the fall maturity of growing things is quite so pleasant as that which leads one to shuffle through this deep forest floor covering of oriental richness of hue.

As the ground warms and the sun searches into the hearts of the buds, the Norway maple, familiar street tree of Eastern cities, breaks into a wonderful bloom. Very deceptive it is, and taken for the opening foliage by the casual observer; yet there is, when these flowers first open, no hint of leaf on the tree, save that of the swelling bud. All that soft haze of greenish yellow is bloom, and bloom of the utmost beauty. The charm lies not in boldness of color or of contrast, but at the other extreme in the delicacy of differing tints, in the variety of subtle shades and tones. There are charms of form and of fragrance, too, in this Norway maple the flowers are many-rayed stars, and they emit a faint, spicy odor, noticeable only when several trees are together in bloom. And these flowers last long, comparatively; so long that the greenish yellow of the young leaves begins to combine with them before they fall. The tints of flower and of leaf melt insensibly into each other, so that, as I have remarked before, the casual observer says, “The leaves are out on the Norway maples,” not knowing of the great mass of delightful flowers that have preceded the leaves above his unseeing eyes. I emphasize this, for I hope some of my readers may be on the outlook for a new pleasure in early spring the blooming of this maple, with flowers so thoroughly distinct and so entirely beautiful.

The sámaras to follow on this Norway maple are smaller than those of the other two maples mentioned, and they hang together at a different angle, somewhat more graceful. I have often wondered how the designers, who work to death the pansies, the roses and the violets, have managed to miss a form or “motive” of such value, suggesting at once the near-by street and far-away Egypt.

A purely American species, and one of as much economic importance as any leaf-dropping tree, is the sugar maple, known also as rock maple one designation because we can get sweetness from its sap, the other because of the hardness of its wood. The sugar maples of New England, to me, are more individual and almost more essentially beautiful than the famed elms. No saccharine life-blood is drawn from the elm; therefore its elegance is considered. I notice that we seldom think much of beauty when it attaches to something we can eat! Who realizes that the common corn, the American maize, is a stately and elegant plant, far more beautiful than many a pampered pet of the greenhouse? But this is not a corn story I shall hope to be heard on the neglected beauty of many common things, some day and we can for the time overlook the syrup of the sugar maple for its delicate blossoms, coming long after the red and the silver are done with their flowers. These sugar-maple blooms hang on slender stems; they come with the first leaves, and are very different in appearance from the flowers of other maples. The observer will have no trouble in recognizing them after the first successful attempt, even though he may be baffled in comparing the maple leaves by the apparent similarity of the foliage of the Norway, the sugar and the sycamore maples at certain stages of growth.

After all, it is the autumn time that brings this maple most strongly before us, for it flaunts its banners of scarlet and yellow in the woods, along the roads, with an insouciant swing of its own. The sugar possibility is forgotten, and it is a pure autumn pleasure to appreciate the richness of color, to be soon followed by the more sober cognizance of the elegance of outline and form disclosed when all the delicate tracery of twig and bough stands revealed against winter’s frosty sky. The sugar maple has a curious habit of ripening or reddening some of its branches very early, as if it was hanging out a warning signal to the squirrels and the chipmunks to hurry along with their storing of nuts against the winter’s need. I remember being puzzled one August morning as I drove along one of Delaware’s flat, flat roads, to know what could possibly have produced the brilliant, blazing scarlet banner that hung across a distant wood as if a dozen red flags were being there displayed. Closer approach disclosed one rakish branch on a sugar maple, all afire with color, while every other leaf on the tree yet held the green of summer.

Again in the mountains, one late summer, half a lusty sugar maple set up a conflagration which, I was informed, presaged its early death. But the next summer it grew as freely as ever, and retained its sober green until the cool days and nights; just as if the ebullition of the season previous was but a breaking out of extra color life, rather than a suggestion of weakness or death.

The Norway maple is botanically Acer platanoides, really meaning plane-like maple, from the similarity of its leaves to those of the European plane. The sycamore maple is Acer Pseudo-platanus, which, being translated, means that old Linnaeus thought it a sort of false plane-like maple. Both are European species, but both are far more familiar, as street and lawn trees, to us dwellers in cities than are many of our purely American species. There is a little difference in the bark of the two, and the leaves of the sycamore, while almost identical in form, are darker and thicker than those of the Norway, and they are whitish underneath, instead of light green. The habit of the two is twin-like; they can scarcely be distinguished when the leaves are off. But the flowers are totally different, and one would hardly believe them to be akin, judging only by appearances. The young leaves of the sycamore maple are lush and vigorous when the long, grape-like flower-clusters appear below the twigs. “Racemes” they are, botanically and that is another truly good scientific word while the beautiful Norway maple’s flowers must stand the angular designation of “corymbs.” But don’t miss looking for the sycamore maple’s long, pendulous racemes. They seem more grape-like than grape blossoms; and they stay long, apparently, the transition from flower to fruit being very gradual. I mind me of a sycamore I pass every winter day, with its dead fruit-clusters, a reminiscence of the flower-racemes, swinging in the frosty breeze, waiting until the spring push of the life within the twigs shoves them off.

To be ready to recognize this maple at the right time, it is well to observe and mark the difference between it and the Norway in the summer time, noting the leaves and the bark as suggested above.

Another maple that is different is one variously known as box-elder, ash-leaved maple, or negundo. Of rapid growth, it makes a lusty, irregular tree. Its green-barked, withe-like limbs seem willing to grow in any direction down, up, sidewise and the result is a peculiar formlessness that has its own merit. I think of a fringe of box-elders along Paxton Creek, decked in early spring with true maple flowers on thread-like stems, each cluster surmounted by soft green foliage apparently borrowed from the ash, and it seems that no other tree could fit better into the place or the season. Then I remember another, a single stately tree that has had a great field all to itself, and stands up in superb dignity, dominating even the group of pin-oaks nearest to it. ’Twas the surprising mist of bloom on this tree that took me up the field on a run, one spring day, when the running was sweet in the air, but sticky underfoot. The color effect of the flowers is most delicate, and almost indescribable in ordinary chromatic terms. Don’t miss the acquaintance of the ash-leaved maple at its flowering time, in the very flush of the springtime, my tree-loving friends!

I have not found a noticeable fragrance in the flowers of the box-elder, such as is very apparent where there is a group of Norway maples in bloom together. The red maples also give to the air a faint and delightfully spicy odor, under favorable conditions. May I hint that the lusty box-elder, when it is booming along its spring growth, furnishes a loose-barked whistle stick about as good as those that come from the willow? The generous growth that provides its loosening sap can also spare a few twigs for the boys, and they will be all the better for a melodious reason for the spring ramble.

The striped maple of Pennsylvania, a comparatively rare and entirely curious small tree or large shrub, is not well known, though growing freely as “elkwood” and “moosewood” in the Alleghanies, because it is rather hard to transplant, and thus offers no inducements to the nurserymen. These good people, like the rest of us, move along the lines of least resistance, wherefore many a fine tree or fruit is rare to us, because shy or difficult of growth, or perhaps unsymmetrical. The fine Rhode Island Greening apple is unpopular because the young tree is crooked, while the leather-skinned and punk-fleshed Ben Davis is a model of symmetry and rapidity of growth. Our glorious tulip tree of the woods, because of its relative difficulty in transplanting, has had to be insisted upon from the nurserymen by those who know its superb beauty. For the same reason this small charming maple, with the large, soft, comfortable leaves upon which the deer love to browse, is kept from showing its delicate June bloom and its remarkable longitudinally striped bark in our home grounds. I hope some maple friends will look for it, and, finding, admire this, the aristocrat among our native species.

The mountain maple the nurserymen call it Acer spicatum is another native of rather dwarf growth. It is bushy, and not remarkable in leaf, its claim for distinction being in its flowers and sámaras, which are held saucily up, above the branches on which they grow, rather than drooping modestly, as other maples gracefully bear their bloom and fruit. These shiny seeds or keys are brightly scarlet, as well, and thus very attractive in color. There is a reason for this, in nature’s economy; for while the loosely hung sámaras of the other maples are distributed by the breezes, the red pods of this mountain maple hold stiffly upward to attract the birds upon whom it largely depends for that sowing which must precede its reproduction.

Of the other maples of America a score of them there are I might write pages, to weariness. The black maple of the Eastern woods, the large-leaved maples of the West, these and many more are in this great family, to say nothing of the many interesting cultivated forms and variations introduced from European nurseries, and most serviceable in formal ornamental planting. But I have told of those I know best and those that any reader can know as well in one season, if he looks for them with the necessary tree love which is but a fine form of true love of God’s creation. This love, once implanted, means surer protection for the trees, otherwise so defenseless against the unthinking vandalism of commercialism or incompetence a vandalism that has not only devastated our American forests, but mutilated shamefully many trees of priceless value in and about our cities.

Of the Japanese maples their leaves seemingly a showing of the ingenuity of these Yankees of the Orient, in their twists of form and depths of odd color I could tell a tale, but it would be of the tree nursery and not of the broad outdoors. Let us close the book and go afield, in park or meadow, on street or lawn, and look to the maples for an unsuspected feast of bloom, if it be spring, or for richness of foliage in summer and autumn; and in coldest winter let us notice the delicate twigs and yet sturdy structure of this tree family that is most of all characteristic of the home, in city or country.