and most easterly point in Russia. Its easterly limit extends from here through Voronej and Kharkof to the Crimea, where it grows in the mountains. It is also met with in the region of the steppes, growing on the banks of streams. The southern limit in Europe is not exactly known; but the tree occurs in the mountains of Turkey, Dalmatia, Italy, and Sicily, and in the Pyrenees and the mountainous parts of the northern provinces of Spain and Portugal.
Inside these limits, its distribution over the continent of Europe is not at all uniform, and is very scattered, as it is totally absent from many districts where the climate or the conditions of the soil are unfavourable. It is rather a tree of the plains, valleys, and hills, than of the mountains; and is especially met with in the broad-leaved forests, often growing as underwood in coppice with standards, and on the edges of woods, on the banks of streams, and in hedges. It ascends in Southern Bavaria to 2500 feet elevation. In France, it is scattered through coppice woods on the plains and low hills; but is rather rare in the Mediterranean region, and is not a native of Corsica. It has been found in Algeria in one or two restricted localities. It grows throughout the Caucasus[1] at elevations ranging from sea-level to 6000 feet.
Acer campestre is abundant as a wild tree in Southern England, and is recorded by Watson[2] from most of the counties of England and Wales, as far north as Durham. It is clearly native, according to Baker,[3] in the denes of the magnesian limestone of Durham, but is doubtfully so north of the Tyne, though it may be indigenous in the woods of the steep banks of the Wansbeck about Morpeth and Mitford, where there are trees about 30 or 40 feet high; but in the Cheviot Hills it seems to have been introduced., Most of the English county records[4] mention it as common in woods, hedges, and on the banks of streams; and in North Yorkshire[5] it ascends to 300 feet and in West Yorkshire[6] to 600 feet.
It is probably not indigenous in Scotland, though Woodforde[7] records it in woods at Queensferry, near Edinburgh, and Gardiner[8] says it grows in a wood at Mains of Hallerton in Forfarshire. In Ireland,[9] though it grows in hedges and woods in many places, it is in all cases planted or derived from plantations.
It has been found in the fossil state[10] in neolithic deposits at Crossness in Essex, and in preglacial deposits at Pakefield in Suffolk. (A.H.)
Cultivation
The maple is common in hedgerows in many parts of England, but can hardly be considered as a forest tree, though it forms a considerable part of the underwood in some woods in the Cotswold Hills, and attains considerable size even on
- ↑ Radde, Pfanzenverb. Kaukasusländ. 175 (1899).
- ↑ Topographical Botany, 104 (1873).
- ↑ Baker and Tate, New Flora of Northumberland and Durham, 141 (1868).
- ↑ Jones and Kingston, Flora Devoniensis, 69 (1829); Ley, Flora of Herefordshire, 63 (1889); Bromfield, Flora Vectensis, 95 (1856); Hind, Flora of Suffolk, 93 (1889); Druce, Flora of Oxfordshire, 65 (1886); Leighton, Flora of Shropshire, 163 (1841).
- ↑ Baker, North Yorkshire, 276 (1906).
- ↑ Lees, Flora of W. Yorkshire, 187 (1888).
- ↑ Catalogue, 23 (1824).
- ↑ Flora of Forfarshire, 39 (1848).
- ↑ Cybele Hibernica, 482 (1898).
- ↑ Reid, Origin British Flora, 113 (1899).
