V. 1. THE BLACK BIRCH. 203 



foliage, and the graceful sweep of their limbs, than the birches. 

 From the delicate and slender gray birch, throwing its thin 

 leaves and often pensile spray lightly on the air, to the broad- 

 headed black birch, with its rich, glossy and abundant foliage, 

 weighing its pendulous branches almost to the ground, — no fam- 

 ily affords such a variety of aspect. There are five birches in 

 Massachusetts which are trees, besides one which is a shrub. 

 They are thus distinguished : — 



1. The Black Birch, by having its bark dark colored; 



2. The Yellow Birch, — bark yellowish, with a silvery lustre'; 



3. The Red Birch, — bark reddish or chocolate-colored, very 

 much broken and ragged ; 



4. The Canoe Birch, — bark white, with a pearly lustre; 



5. The Gray or White Birch, — bark white, chalky, dotted 

 with black; 



6. The Dwarf or Shrub Birch, — bark covered with glandular 

 points, a shrub. 



Michaux arranged the birches in two sections : one compre- 

 hending trees whose fertile aments are sessile and erect ; the 

 Black, the Yellow, the Red, and the Glandular, birches ; the 

 other, those whose fertile aments are stalked and pendulous, the 

 Canoe, the White, and the common European. The division 

 seems a very natural one, bringing together those which are 

 most nearly allied in habit, and in the qualities of their wood. 



Sp. 1. The Black Birch. Sweet Birch. B. lenta. Linn. 



Figured in Michaux, Sylva, II, Plate 74. 



The black birch is easily distinguished by the dark color of 

 its bark ; and from this obtains the name by which it is almost 

 universally known. From its resemblance, in bark and leaves, 

 to a cherry tree, it is also sometimes called the cherry birch ; 

 and from the agreeable spicy odor and taste of the leaves and 

 inner bark, it often has the name of the sweet birch, or fragrant 

 birch, as in Bryant's lines on the murdered Traveller, — 



"The fragrant birch above him hung her tassels in the sky, 

 And many a vernal blossom sprung and nodded careless by." 



