351 352

maple , and sugar maple , this last name, the present standard common name, only attaining widespread usage on the island in the later nineteenth century.

What we now know as the red maple (Acer rubrum) appears to have been recorded by fifteen persons, and like A. saccharum, under a variety of

names: white maplem, red maple35“, curled maple355, white sugar maple“, and red flowering maple357. In fact, several of these persons appear

to have recorded Acer rubrum as two separate species: Stewart (1806) called these ’white’ and ’red’ maple, his red maple being a small tree "of no value, generally found growing in swamps”, while his white maple was a "large and useful” tree — which by inference did not grow in swampsm. MacGregor (1828) also appears to have differentiated Acer rubrum into two species — though, curiously, his names are the reverse of Stewart's: his ’white maple’ did not ”arrive at so large a size as the other [maple species]", while his ’red’ was among the large maple species.

Sutherland (1861) makes a similar differentiation:

35‘ Like curled maple, "bird’s eye" or "bird-eye" was a descriptive

name applied to the wood of some sugar maple (A. saccharum) trees exhibiting a particular grain pattern (see Perley 1847; p. 138). Though bird's eye maple was sometimes listed as if it were a separate species (Johnstone (1822) and MacGregor (1828) do so), Stewart (1806) correctly noted it to be a variety of what he called the rock or curled maple (i.e. Acer saccharum); while Hill (1839) gave it as an alternative name for the same species.

352 Anon. 1818; Bagster 1861; [Bain] 1882; Bain 1890; Macoun 1894. ‘Sugar maple’ is also used as an alternative name by [Cambridge] (1796?) and Walsh (1803), and, seemingly, as a generic name for all of the maples by Bouchette (1832).

353 [Cambridge] 1796?; Walsh 1803; Stewart 1806; Johnstone 1822; MacGregor 1828; Lewellin 1832; Sutherland 1861; Bagster 1861. The ‘white maple’ of Chappell (1775-1818) (in 1801) is also likely to have been A. rubrum, as is that of W. S. McNeill mentioned in evidence to the Land Commission (1875).

35‘ Stewart 1806; MacGregor 1828; [Bain] 1882; Bain 1890; Macoun 1894.

355 [Cambridge] (1796?) and Walsh (1803) use “curled maple" as an alternative name for what must have been A. rubrum (see footnote 347),

356 Sutherland 1861. 357 Bagster 1861. The name “red flowering maple" is also used for the species by Perley (1847) in his Report on the Forest Trees of New Brunswick.

358 Oddly, Stewart gave his white maple the Latin name Acer negundo - which has always been the name for the Mantitoba maple, which was only introduced much later to the island (Erskine 1960). Philip Corsey of Breadalbane (personal communication) says that he has come across the similar use of the name "white maple" by some older woodsmen in the Breadalbane area for Acer rubrum growing in upland areas.

196

his ”white sugar maple” was a ”large and valuable" tree, while his ”white maple” had wood that was ”soft and little esteemed”.

Of the two smaller maple species, striped maple (Acer pensy/vanicum) is first recorded by MacGregor (1828) under the name ”waved maple or zebra wood”, and thereafter by five recorders as ”striped maple359 and one as "moosewood'360. There are only five records for the mountain

maple36‘.

We may conclude that the correct recognition and naming of the maple species presented a problem to many recorders which was not resolved until the latter half of the nineteenth century by those I call the ’botanical' recorders, e.g. Bagster (1861), Bain (1890) and Macoun (1894).

General distribution and abundance — Maples are included in thirty-five of the thirty-six complete tree lists (Table 1—6)362, some of the list-makers including the genus among the island's more important treesm. Of the sixteen list-makers who further differentiated the genus into different named species, all noted the presence of Acer saccharum, while twelve noted the presence of Acer rubrum — though, as noted above, sometimes as two separate species. That only a minority of the list-makers recorded the presence of these two trees on the island is less an indication of their scarcity, than of the failure of most of the early recorders to attempt to differentiate between them. Not surprisingly, the other two species (striped maple and mountain maple), being more often encountered as understorey trees and shrubs, did not attract the attention of the

359 Bagster 1861; Sutherland 1861 (he also called it “moosewood"); Bain 1890; Macoun 1894; Johnston 1895.

36° Rowan 1876. Several later recorders used only the Latin name or its English translation: Bain (1868-1884): in 1873 he recorded it in abbreviated form as "A. Pen”; [Bain] 1882: "the “Pennsylvanian maple"; McSwain & Bain (1891).

35‘ Bain 1868-1884 (on 6 Feb.1873); [Bain] 1882; Bain 1890; McSwain & Bain 1891; Johnson 1895.

352 For the thirty-seventh list ([Watson] post 1904), the page that would have contained the maples was missing.

36" It is a ‘principal' tree of Patterson (1770), Anon. (1808), [Hill?] (1819), MacGregor (1832); Martin (1837); Murray (1839) and Monro (1855); among “the most prevailing hard wood trees" of [Cambridge] (1796?); one ofthe ‘chief‘ trees of Anon. (1877); and one of the four main tree genera of Walsh (1803). Its omission from the ‘principal‘ trees of Holland (1765: March) is likely to have been an over-sight, since he included it in his October 1765 list of the island's tree species. In contrast to these; Plessis (1812) recorded; clearly erroneously, that there was almost no maple on the island.