Striped Maple
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 Striped Maple leaves, Cranberry Wilderness, West Virginia
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| Acer pensylvanicum L. |
The Striped Maple (Acer pensylvanicum), also known as Moosewood or American snakebark maple, is a small tree of northern forests in eastern North America from southern Ontario east to Nova Scotia and south to eastern Illinois and New Jersey, and also at high elevations in the Appalachian Mountains much farther south than in the rest of is range, to northern Georgia.
It is an attractive small tree growing to 5-10 m tall, with a trunk up to 20 cm diameter. The young bark is striped with green and white, and when a little older, brown. The leaves are broad and soft, 8-15 cm long and 6-12 cm broad, with three shallow forward-pointing lobes. The fruit is a samara; the seeds are about 27 mm long and 11 mm broad, with a wing angle of 145° and a conspicuously veined pedicel.
The spelling pensylvanicum is the one originally used by Linnaeus.
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[edit] Ecology
Moosewood is an understory tree of cool, moist forests. It prefers slopes. It is among the most shade-tolerant of deciduous trees. It can germinate and persist for years as a small understory shrub, growing rapidly to its full height when a gap opens up. It does not ever become a canopy tree, however, and once the gap above it is closed, it responds by flowering profusely, and to some degree by vegetative reproduction.
[edit] Cultivation and uses
Striped Maple is sometimes grown as an ornamental tree for its decorative bark, though it is difficult to transplant.
The wood is soft and considered undesirable among maples. Although ecologically there is no reason to consider it a pest, foresters sometimes consider the striped maple to be a pest tree, even to the point of applying herbicides to destroy it. Its shade tolerance makes it difficult to control, as it is often present in great numbers in the understory.
[edit] Related Species
Acer pensylvanicum is in the same taxonomic section as other snakebark maples such as Acer capillipes, Acer davidii and Acer rubescens, all of which share similar leaf-shape and similar vertically-striped bark.
[edit] References and external links
- Hibbs, D. E. & Fischer, B. C. (1979). Sexual and Vegetative Reproduction of Striped Maple (Acer pensylvanicum L.). Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 106 (3): 222-227.
- Hibbs, D. E., Wilson, B. F., & Fischer, B. C. (1980). Habitat Requirements and Growth of Striped Maple (Acer pensylvanicum L.). Ecology 61 (3): 490-496
- NRCS: USDA Plants Profile and map: Acer pennsylvanicum
- Acer pensylvanicum images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
