Trees or shrubs with watery often saccharine sap, opposite, simple and palmately lobed leaves and axillary or terminal, cymose or racemose, regular, polygamous or diœcious flowers; fruit of 2 long-winged samaras, joined at the base.

A shrub or small tree 6—30 feet high, 2—8 inches in diameter, smooth throughout except the scales which are densely soft, hairy inside. Leaves round-cordate with shallow sinus, 2—4 inches broad and nearly as long, more or less deeply 3-lobed or parted, the ovate-acuminate lobes doubly serrate with slender teeth; conspicuously veined. Flowers greenish-yellow, somewhat corymbose on short 2-leaved branchlets appearing after the leaves. Fruit smooth with slightly spreading wings about an inch long.

One of the few deciduous trees of the region, growing on slopes with the other forest trees and in the moist valleys.