l 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.

[Illustration: Striped maple]

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 samaras, 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 samaras 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.