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. This love, once implanted, means surer protection for the trees, otherwise so defenseless against the unthinking vandalism of commercialism or incompetence--a vandalism that has not only devastated our American forests, but mutilated shamefully many trees of priceless value in and about our cities.
Of the Japanese maples--their leaves seemingly a showing of the ingenuity of these Yankees of the Orient, in their twists of form and depths of odd color--I could tell a tale, but it would be of the tree nursery and not of the broad outdoors. Let us close the book and go afield, in park or meadow, on street or lawn, and look to the maples for an unsuspected feast of bloom, if it be spring, or for richness of foliage in summer and autumn; and in coldest winter let us notice the delicate twigs and yet sturdy structure of this tree family that is most of all characteristic of the home, in city or country.