RED MAPLE
(Acer Rubrum)

This tree’s names describe it. Some refer to color of leaves, flowers, and fruit, others to situation where it grows best. It is known as red maple and swamp maple; also as water maple, white maple, scarlet maple, and shoepeg maple. New York Indians called it ah-we-hot-kwah, which meant red flower. Most trees looked alike to Indians, and when they gave a name, it was descriptive.

The redness of this maple is so marked that it cannot escape notice. The flowers, fruit, twigs, and leaves all possess the property at one time or another during the season. The flower comes before the leaf, during the first warm days of spring. That is pretty early in the South, and later in the North. The flowers are bright scarlet, and very conspicuous, growing in umbel-like, drooping clusters. The staminate and pistillate ones frequently grow on different trees, and always in separate clusters.

The fruit ripens quickly, and is sometimes almost mature before the leaves appear. The date of ripening depends upon latitude. The tree’s range north and south exceeds a thousand miles and that makes much difference in climate. In the South the fruit outstrips the leaves and has about reached maturity before the unfolding leaves are large enough to hide it; but in New England and New York the leaves are large before the fruit is mature. The seed is the characteristic maple key, with a wing to carry it. The fruit—and by that term the seed with its attached wing is meant—is bright red, and a tree loaded with the vivid clusters is a beautiful spectacle. Two seeds are generally fast together, and they make surprising flights in that condition, passing with whirling motion through the air. Gravity spins them, but wind carries them forward, and the random of their flight depends on the strength of the wind, which happens to be blowing when they sever their connection with the tree.

The seeds germinate quickly when they light on damp soil. If they do not find such situations, they soon perish; because they do not retain their vitality long. By the middle of summer the young trees have several leaves, and from that time on the struggle is mainly among themselves for space and moisture, because they stand so thick that it is a survival of the fittest.

The young twigs are generally red in spring, but they do not present as conspicuous a mass as the flowers and fruit do. The leaves are simple, with long reddish petioles. They have three or five lobes, the lower pair often entirely missing, and small if present. Each lobe has a pointed apex, and is irregularly serrate. The base of the leaf is rounded; also the sinuses, which extend far into the body of the leaf. The upper surface of the leaf is bright green, the lower a silvery-white. In the fall this tree is entitled to the name scarlet; for then the brilliant hues of the leaves are remarkably fine.

The range of red maple covers more than a million square miles, and touches every state east of the Mississippi river, and west of that stream it extends from South Dakota to Texas. It prefers rather swampy ground, but wants fertile soil. It is frequently found on the banks of creeks and rivers, and rarely on hillsides. It is most abundant in the South, particularly in the lower Mississippi valley, while trees of larger size are found in the valley of the lower Ohio. In the North it takes more to low wet swamps where it sometimes grows in such thickets as almost to exclude other species.

The best red maple trees attain a height of 100 feet or more, and a diameter of four feet or less. The average size is seventy feet high and two in diameter. The form of the tree, like that of all other maples, depends much upon the situation in which it grows. Good saw timber is not often cut from this species near the outer borders of its range.

The wood is about three-fourths as strong as hard maple, and is five pounds lighter per cubic foot, but is about six pounds heavier than soft or silver maple. It may, therefore, be considered that in some important points red maple is midway between hard and soft maple. In color it is light brown, slightly tinged with red. The sapwood is thick and lighter in color than the heart. The tree is usually not of rapid growth. The contrast between the springwood and summerwood is not strong. The wood is very porous, but the pores are so small that the unaided eye cannot discern them. The medullary rays are numerous, but thin, and are seldom considered in working the lumber.

Mills which saw this maple do not separate the lumber from other maples. The woodsman knows the difference, but the lumberman does not consider it worth while to pile the sawed stock separately. It sometimes goes to market as hard maple, sometimes as soft, but never under its own name. Consequently, it has no uses which are not also common to other maples. Lumbermen cut it when they find it mixed with other hardwoods where they are carrying on logging operations.

Red maple is made into flooring, interior finish, and veneer box material. Veneers are also made for furniture. These are the most important uses for the wood, but the manufacturers of woodenware employ it for numerous commodities, such as trays, bowls, ironing boards, grain scoops, snow shovels, clothes racks, garment hangers, and clothes pins. This species shows birdseye effect similar to that of sugar maple, but less of the stock goes to market. Logs with birdseye wood are generally reduced to veneer by the rotary process. Curly and wavy grains also occur in this maple. The wavy grain was much sought after by the early hunters who equipped their long rifles with stocks. Having found a piece of timber with the desired wavy grain, the hunter proceeded to shave and whittle until the stock was fitted to the barrel, and the gun was complete. Some of the stocks made with no tools but an ax, drawing knife, and a pocket knife, were works of art which are worthy of preservation in museums.

Occasionally some unknown rural Stradivari made a violin and selected the curly wood of red maple for the neck and sides. A few of these instruments are floating about the country, but an age of fifty or a hundred years has not yet imparted classic value to them, but the wood is unsurpassed in delicacy of grain and figure.

Sugar may be manufactured from red maple, but in smaller quantity than from sugar maple. In the days when every frontier settlement did its own manufacturing, inks and dyes were made from the bark of this tree. The tannin boiled from the bark was treated with sulphate of iron, and it became ink; when alum was added it became black dye; when the sulphate of iron was omitted, and alum alone was put in, a cinnamon-colored dye resulted.

Red maple is one of the most desirable trees for planting in parks and by roadsides. Nurserymen complain that seedlings are more difficult to manage than silver maples; nor do they grow as rapidly, but the trees are worth much more when once established. They have shorter and stronger branches than silver maple; are less liable to be attacked by disease; are more handsome in every way; but they demand damper soil, and succeed poorly in any other. That drawback tends to restrict the artificial planting of this tree.