Acer pensylvanicum

Acer pensylvanicum
Striped Maple leaves, Cranberry Wilderness, West Virginia
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Eudicots
(unranked): Rosids
Order: Sapindales
Family: Aceraceae
Genus: Acer
Species: A. pensylvanicum
Binomial name
Acer pensylvanicum
L.
Natural range

Acer pensylvanicum (striped maple, also known as moosewood and moose maple) is a species of maple.

Description

It is a small deciduous 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.

Distribution

The natural range extends from Nova Scotia and the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec, west to southern Ontario, Michigan, and eastern Minnesota; south to northeastern Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, and in the mountains to northern Georgia.[1]

Ecology

Striped maple growing at the edge of a forest with pine and hickory in the background (Zena, New York)

Moosewood is an understory tree of cool, moist forests, often preferring slopes. It is among the most shade-tolerant of deciduous trees, capable of germinating and persisting for years as a small understory shrub, then growing rapidly to its full height when a gap opens up. However, it does not grow high enough to become a canopy tree, and once the gap above it closes through succession, it responds by flowering and fruiting profusely, and to some degree spreading by vegetative reproduction.[2]

References

  1. ↑ "Striped Maple". Retrieved 8 September 2014.
  2. ↑ Hibbs, D. E; B. C. Fischer (1979). "Sexual and Vegetative Reproduction of Striped Maple (Acer pensylvanicum L.)". Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 106: 222– 227. doi:10.2307/2484558.

External links

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