THE BLACK MAPLE.
A. nigrum, Michx.
The black maple is so like the sugar maple that they are easily confused, but its stout branchlets are orange-colored, the leaves are smooth and green on both sides, scantly toothed, and they droop as if their stems were too weak to hold up the blades. The keys spread more widely than those of the sugar maple.
The black maple is the sugar maple of South Dakota and Iowa. It becomes rarer as one goes east. It is an
admirable lumber tree, as well as a noble street and shade tree.
Two soft maples are found in the eastern part of the country, their sap less sweet, their wood softer than the hard maples, and their fitness for street planting corres pondingly less.