Cultivation
This is the commonest in cultivation of all the American maples, except A. Negundo, and was the first to be introduced, having been cultivated by Tradescant as long ago as 1656. Miller says that a tree produced seed in his time from which plants were raised in the Bishop's garden at Fulham; and, according to Loudon, one of these in 1793 was 4o feet by 4 feet 3 inches, but was dead before 1809. It was often confused with the silver maple, and even Loudon says that they are only varieties of one species, though he treats them under separate names. No one, however, who has seen them in their native country could doubt their distinction, which was first established by Linnæus.
The red maple is perfectly hardy everywhere in Great Britain, but requires considerable summer heat and a good soil to bring it to any size. On dry sandy soils it is a stunted tree of no beauty. Its seed, like that of the silver maple, ripens early and must be sown at once, but Loudon says that in his time it was propagated by layers, which, coupled with insufficiency of moisture in the soil, may account for the rarity of fine specimens.
I have raised seedlings this year from seeds sent me from Arley by Mr. R. Woodward in July, when he found them germinating freely below the parent tree; and Mr. Knowles, gardener to H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, tells me that he has found self-sown seedlings at Bagshot Park.
Remarkable Trees
At no place in England, so far as we know, are there so many fine red maples as at Bagshot Park, the seat of H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught. When I visited this place on May 22, 1907, the fruit was so abundant on trees in an open wood that it gave them quite a red appearance. The largest of these that I measured was 82 feet by 94 feet, with a bole about 20 feet long (Plate 177). There is another on the bank of the lake at Claremont which measures about 75 feet by 94 feet.
At Whitton, near Hounslow, there is a large tree, probably 150 years old, near the group of Taxodium distichum, in ground which has moisture beneath, and in 1904 it measured 80 feet by 8 feet 5 inches, but as this tree is not mentioned by Loudon, it may not be so old as we think, though decay has already commenced (Plate 192). At Walcot there is a tree which in March 1904 was in flower, and measured 68 feet by 64 feet. At Arley Castle there is a fine tree with mistletoe growing on it, which produced seed freely in 1907, and measures about 60 feet by 74, feet.
In a wood south of Virginia Water in Windsor Park, Henry measured, in 1906, a tree 80 feet by 6 feet 2 inches; and at South Lodge, Enfield Chase, there is a tree which was 50 feet by 6 feet 7 inches in 1904.
A variety under the name of globosum, which I saw growing in an ornamental
