Flowers, staminate and pistillate together, in pendulous racemes, appearing when the leaves are fully grown, bright yellow, fragrant; pedicels slender, pubescent, often branched; stamens nine or ten, filaments pubescent ; ovary tomentose. Fruit, ripening in autumn, brown, the carpels covered with long, pale hairs, which extend along the thickened edge of the wing; keys slightly divergent, about 2 inches long.(A.H.)
Distribution
This species, which is the largest of the American maples, is confined to the Pacific coast, where it extends from about 55° N. in Alaska to the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California, but never, according to Sargent, far from the coast or ascending the mountains higher than about 2000 feet. It is the largest deciduous tree in Vancouver Island except Populus trichocarpa, and | believe also in Washington and Oregon, though surpassed by some of the oaks in California. It attains its maximum size in the wet and mild climate of Puget Sound, especially in the Olympic Mountains, and grows with the luxuriance of a tropical tree covered with ferns, moss, and climbing plants. The beautiful photograph (Plate 193), for which I am indebted to Mrs, Browne of Tacoma, was taken near Lake Cushman in the Olympic Mountains. I cannot give exact measurements of these trees, but the height was estimated at 130 feet.1 On Capt. Barkley’s farm, north of Duncans, Vancouver Island, I measured several trees of 110 to 120 feet high, and on Swallowfield farm two trees on the banks of a river, of about the same height, one being 12 feet, the other 13 feet in girth. A gigantic spreading tree on the same farm had a swelling butt, no less than 15 paces round at the ground, but of no great height. It grows as a rule in flat meadows with Douglas fir, Abies grandis, and Thuya plicata, and likes a fairly damp soil. Farther south in the drier country of Oregon, it is smaller; Sheldon says 50 to 90 feet high by 6 to 15 feet in girth. In the dry country of Northern California about Lake Tahoe it becomes a low crooked tree only 8 to 20 inches in diameter. Its large keys are produced very abundantly, and when ripe add to the ornamental appearance of the tree.
Cultivation
Discovered by Menzies during Vancouver's voyage to British Columbia, it was introduced into England in 1812. Douglas sent home seeds to the Royal Horticultural Society about 1827, from which we believe the oldest trees in England have grown. But though very easy to raise and a very rapid grower when young, it does not ripen its young wood when quite young, this being often killed back by the frosts of winter, sometimes to the ground; but as the trees get older this failing decreases. Though the tree is hardy, at least as far north as East Lothian,
1 Mr. F.R.S. Balfour of Dawick tells me that in the deep alluvial soil of the valley above Lake Cushman, this tree
attains an immense size, being well sheltered by the steep mountains around. The maples grow here mixed with Alnus oregona, Populus trichocarpa, and Thuya plicata; and though overtopped by the last two, he estimated the maples at over 150 feet high. He also saw it of great size in the Puyallup Valley, and at the mouth of the Nisqually River in Washington ;
and adds that it is being extensively planted as a shade tree in the towns of the Pacific coast.
