maple

1. any tree or shrub of the N temperate genus Acer, having winged seeds borne in pairs and lobed leaves: family Aceraceae

2. the hard close-grained wood of any of these trees, used for furniture and flooring

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

maple

A hard, tough, moderately high-density wood, light to dark brown in color, with a uniform texture; used for flooring and wood trim. See also: Douglas fir

maple

When the robin birds start to sing in your maple tree in the spring, that's the time to stick a tap in the tree and start harvesting maple water, drink it fresh from the tree. It's slightly sweet and extremely healthy for the body. High in magnesium. Your body needs magnesium more than calcium or potassium- it keeps your heart beating, your blood flowing. Without magnesium in your system, your heart stops and you die. If someone's having a heart attack, put cayenne pepper under their tongue, it's high in magnesium, just like maple. Eating the nut from the little "helicopter wing" keys from a maple tree is a great source of magnesium (although not too great tasting). Maple syrup is maple water that's been boiled-down, some claim it cleans kidneys and liver. Maple flowers are also edible. Inner bark tea used for colds, coughs, lung and kidney problems, gonorrhea, skin problems, blood purifier, diarrhea, duiretic, expectorant.

maple

[′mā·pəl]

(botany)

Any of various broad-leaved, deciduous trees of the genus Acer in the order Sapindales characterized by simple, opposite, usually palmately lobed leaves and a fruit consisting of two long-winged samaras.

(materials)

The hard, light-colored, close-grained wood, especially from sugar maple (A. saccharum).

maple

A hard, tough, moderately high-density wood of North America and Europe, light to dark brown in color; has a uniform texture; used for flooring, wood turning, etc. also see bird’s-eye maple.

Maple

A symbolic mathematics package by B. Char, K. Geddes, G. Gonnet, M. Monagan and S. Watt of the University of Waterloo, Canada and ETH Zurich, Switzerland in 1980. Version: Maple V.

E-mail: <wmsi@daisy.waterloo.edu>. Mailing list: glabahn@daisy.waterloo.edu.

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Maple

(Acer), a genus of trees or shrubs of the family Aceraceae. The leaves are deciduous, opposite, and either entire or pinnately compound. The flowers, which are generally yellowish green, are in corymbs or racemes. The fruit is double winged. There are approximately 150 species, distributed in Europe, Asia, North Africa, and North and Central America. Twenty-nine species are found in the USSR—in the European USSR, the Far East, and Middle Asia. Maples grow in deciduous and mixed forests; pure stands of maple are rarely formed. The wood has many industrial uses; for example, it is used in the manufacture of furniture, musical instruments, and other products. Maple sap contains up to 2–5 percent sugar. Maple trees yield nectar. The various forms of the leaves (which in autumn turn red, orange, or yellow) impart an ornamental quality to maples.

The three most common species in the USSR are the Norway maple (Acer platanoides), the common maple, or hedge maple (A. campestre), and A. tataricum. The Norway maple measures up to 30 m in height and sometimes up to 1 m in diameter. It grows in the European USSR with other broad-leaved varieties of maples and with conifers. The Norway maple is a shade-tolerant and frost-resistant tree. The common maple measures up to 15–20 m in height and up to 50–60 cm in diameter. It grows in the forest-steppe zone of the European USSR (as far as the Volga), as well as in the Crimea and the Caucasus. It is droughtresistant and relatively salt-resistant. The species A. tataricum, which is a small tree or a large shrub, is distributed in the broad-leaved forests of the European USSR. It is drought-resistant. The box elder (A. negundo), which is native to America, is used for landscaping arid regions.

REFERENCES

Poiarkova, A. I. “Botaniko-geograficheskii obzor klenov SSSR i sviazi s istoriei vsego roda Acer L.” In Flora i sistematika vysshikh rastenii, issue 1. Leningrad, 1933. (Tr. Botanicheskogo instituta AN SSSR, series 1.)
Flora SSSR, vol. 14. Leningrad-Moscow, 1949.

S. K. CHEREPANOV