A tree up to 50 ft in height, and 6 ft in girth of trunk; branchlets glabrous, dark red at the fall of the leaf. Leaves deeply five-lobed, 4 to 8 in. wide, about three-fourths as long, base heart-shaped; dark lustrous green and glabrous above, pale and slightly glaucous beneath, with tufts of down in the axils of the chief veins, especially at the base where they meet the leaf-stalk; margins coarsely and angularly toothed. Flowers following the leaves, and produced in glabrous, erect corymbs. Fruits downy on the nutlets when young, becoming glabrous; wings 13⁄4 to 2 in. long, 1⁄2 to 3⁄4 in. wide, parallel, or almost connivent, sometimes overlapping. Bot. Mag., t. 6697.
Native of the Caucasus, Asiatic Turkey and Persia; introduced to Van Volxem’s nursery in 1866. It is a handsome-foliaged tree, very striking in spring with its brilliant crimson bud-scales and again in late summer when the large fruit-wings take on a reddish hue. It has been much confused with A. velutinum, but is distinguished by the wings of the fruit not spreading and by the marginal teeth not pointing forwards. See also A. heldreichii.