=Horticultural Value.=--Hardy in cultivation throughout New England; prefers moist, well-drained, gravelly loam in partial shade, but grows well in any good soil; easily transplanted, but recovers its vigor rather slowly; foliage free from disease. Seldom grown in nurseries, but readily obtainable from northern collectors of native plants. [Illustration: PLATE LXXV.--Acer spicatum.] 1. Winter buds. 2. Flowering branch. 3. Sterile flower. 4. Abortive ovary in sterile flower. 5. Fertile flower with part of the perianth and stamens removed. 6. Fruiting branch. =Acer Pennsylvanicum, L.= STRIPED MAPLE. MOOSEWOOD. WHISTLEWOOD. =Habitat and Range.=--Cool, rocky or sandy woods. Nova Scotia to Lake Superior. Maine,--abundant, especially northward in the forests; New Hampshire and Vermont,--common in highland woods; Massachusetts,--common in the western and central sections, rare towards the coast; Rhode Island,--frequent northward; Connecticut,--frequent, reported as far south as Cheshire (New Haven county). South on shaded mountain slopes and in deep ravines to Georgia; west to Minnesota. =Habit.=--Shrub or small tree, 15-25 feet high, with a diameter at the ground of 5-8 inches; characterized by a slender, beautifully striate trunk and straight branches; by the roseate flush of the opening foliage, deepening later to a yellowish-green; and by the long, graceful, pendent racemes of yellowish flowers, succeeded by the abundant, drooping fruit. =Bark.=--Bark of trunk and branches deep reddish-brown or dark green, conspicuously striped longitudinally with pale and blackish bands; roughish with light buff, irregular dots; the younger branches marked with oval leaf-scars and the linear scars of the leaf-scales; the season's shoots smooth, light green, mottled with black. In spring the bark of the small branches is easily separable, giving rise to the name "whistle wood." =Winter Buds and Leaves.=--Terminal bud long, short-stalked, obscurely 4-sided, tapering to a blunt tip; lateral buds small and flat; opening foliage roseate. Leaves simple, opposite; 5-6 inches long and nearly as broad; the upper leaves much narrower; when fully grown light green above, paler beneath, finally nearly glabrous, yellow in autumn, divided above the center into three deep acuminate lobes, finely, sharply, and usually doubly serrate; base heart-shaped, truncate, or rounded; leafstalks 1-3 inches long, grooved, the enlarged base including the leaf-buds of the next season.