Striped Maple

Description:

Acer pensylvanicum (striped maple, also known as moosewood and moose maple) is a species of maple native to northern and montane forests in eastern North America from southern Ontario east to Nova Scotia and south to Wisconsin, Ohio, and New Jersey, and also at higher elevations in the Appalachian Mountains south to northern Georgia.[citation needed] 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.[citation

Habitat:

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.[1]