WHITEBARK MAPLE (_Acer leucoderme_) has been classed as a variety of
sugar maple, and also as a separate species. It is named from the
light gray color of the bark of young stems; but the color turns
dark with age. The tree is usually twenty or thirty feet high with a
diameter of a foot or more. The wood is of good quality, but no
uses, except fuel, have been reported. Trees are not abundant, but
the range covers parts of North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia,
Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas. It is occasionally planted as a
shade tree along the streets of towns of Georgia and Alabama.
[Illustration]
OREGON MAPLE
[Illustration: OREGON MAPLE]
OREGON MAPLE
(_Acer Macrophyllum_)
Botanists prefer to call this tree broadleaf maple. The name is not
inappropriate, as its extraordinarily broad leaves constitute the most
striking feature of the tree where it stands in the woods. The leaf is
usually wider than it is long. Some exceed a foot in both measurements.
Bigleaf maple is not an uncommon name for the tree in Oregon, where it
attains its highest development in damp valleys where the soil is good.
The name white maple is not particularly descriptive of any feature of
the tree, though the name is applied in both Oregon and Washington. In
California it is known simply as maple. There is small likelihood in
that region that it will be confused with any other member of the maple
household; nor is there much danger of such a thing in any part of the
Pacific coast, for, though four species of maple occur there, no one of
them bears close enough resemblance to this one to be mistaken for it.
The Oregon maple’s range north and south covers twenty degrees of
latitude. In that particular it is not much surpassed, if surpassed at
all, by any maple of this country. Its northern limit lies in Alaska,
its southern close to the Mexican boundary, in San Diego county,
California. Its range east and west is restricted. It has a width of
about one hundred and fifty miles in California, where it grows from the
coast to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. An altitude of
5,600 feet appears to be the limit of its range upward. It attains
altitudes above 5,000 feet at several points in the Sierra Nevada range.
It descends nearly to sea level. Its geographical range is similar to
the ranges of several other Pacific coast species which occupy long
ribbons of territory stretching north and south parallel with the coast
of the Pacific ocean.
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