PLANTS: Shrubs, or trees to ca. 12 m high (in ours), monoecious or dioecious.
LEAVES: palmately lobed or trifoliolate (in ours), membranous or submembranous.
INFLORESCENCE: corymbose, racemose, or umbelliform.
FLOWERS: (in ours) inconspicuous, greenish-yellow, wind-pollinated, (elsewhere, in some spp., conspicuous, insect-pollinated); ovary compressed, with two lateral lobes that develop into wings.
FRUIT: two-winged, at maturity separating into two, single-winged, samaras and a persistent carpophore.
REFERENCES: Landrum, Leslie R. 1995. Aceraceae. J. Ariz. - Nev. Acad. Sci. 29(1): 2, 2-3.
Lvs simple and usually palmately veined and lobed, or less often pinnately or palmately compound with few lfls; fr normally a double samara with winged mericarps, the seed-bearing base of the mericarp thickened and not winged. (Argentacer, Negundo, Rufacer, Saccharodendron) 110, cosmop.
Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.
©The New York Botanical Garden. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
