elicate
tracery of twig and bough stands revealed against winter's frosty sky.
The sugar maple has a curious habit of ripening or reddening some of its
branches very early, as if it was hanging out a warning signal to the
squirrels and the chipmunks to hurry along with their storing of nuts
against the winter's need. I remember being puzzled one August morning
as I drove along one of Delaware's flat, flat roads, to know what could
possibly have produced the brilliant, blazing scarlet banner that hung
across a distant wood as if a dozen red flags were being there
displayed. Closer approach disclosed one rakish branch on a sugar maple,
all afire with color, while every other leaf on the tree yet held the
green of summer.

Again in the mountains, one late summer, half a lusty sugar maple set up
a conflagration which, I was informed, presaged its early death. But the
next summer it grew as freely as ever, and retained its sober green
until the cool days and nights; just as if the ebullition of the season
previous was but a breaking out of extra color life, rather than a
suggestion of weakness or death.

[Illustration: Sycamore maple blossoms]

The Norway maple is botanically _Acer platanoides_, really meaning
plane-like maple, from the similarity of its leaves to those of the
European plane. The sycamore maple is _Acer Pseudo-platanus_, which,
being translated, means that old Linnaeus thought it a sort of false
plane-like maple. Both are European species, but both are far more
familiar, as street and lawn trees, to us dwellers in cities than are
many of our purely American species. There is a little difference in the
bark of the two, and the leaves of the sycamore, while almost identical
in form, are darker and thicker than those of the Norway, and they are
whitish underneath, instead of light green. The habit of the two is
twin-like; they can scarcely be distinguished when the leaves are off.
But the flowers are totally different, and one would hardly believe them
to be akin, judging only by appearances. The young leaves of the
sycamore maple are lush and vigorous when the long, grape-like
flower-clusters appear below the twigs. "Racemes" they are,
botanically--and that is another truly good scientific word--while the
beautiful Norway maple's flowers must stand the angular designation of
"corymbs." But don't miss looking for the sycamore maple's long,
pendulous racemes. They seem more grape-like than grape blossoms; and