206 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



decoction of the bark, with copperas, is used for coloring woollen 

 a beautiful and permanent drab, bordering on wine color. 



In a pasture south of Meeting-house Pond, in Westminster, 

 among the broad clumps or islands of broad-leaved laurel, I 

 found a black birch in July, 1839, which, at three feet from the 

 ground, measured nine feet and five inches in girth. This tree 

 was remarkable for the projection of the roots just above the 

 surface, for the deep rifts in the old bark, which peeled off in 

 broad plates, and for an enormous fungus which had attached 

 itself to the bottom of one of the cracks. This measured eighteen 

 inches across, eleven in height, and projected eleven inches hori- 

 zontally from the trunk. 



Sp. 2. The Yellow Birch. B. excelsa. Aiton. 



Figured in Michaux, Sylva, II, Plate 73. 



In its native forests, the yellow birch is a lofty tree, lifting its 

 head into the sunshine among the tall hemlocks, rock maples 

 and ashes, with which it grows. It is distinguished by its yel- 

 lowish bark of a soft silken texture, and silvery or pearly lustre. 

 The recent and still growing shoots are slender, of a reddish, 

 purplish, or deep bottle green, somewhat hairy, and dotted with 

 gray. The older branchlets are of a polished copper or golden 

 bronze, or of a dark alder green, with often a thin, grayish, 

 transparent film scaling off horizontally in rolls. On the larger 

 branches in young trunks, the bark begins to assume a metallic 

 lustre, with the horizontal dots long and conspicuous, and the 

 epidermis loose in narrow strips, hanging out like the frayed 

 ends of narrow ribbons. The trunk then begins to take a yel- 

 lowish color, and thin lichens intersperse their black-dotted, 

 white clouds. On vigorous trunks of a foot in diameter, are 

 seen long rolls of loose bark adhering by the middle or by one 

 end; while, in very old trees, the trunk becomes rough, with 

 large, broad, gray scales, separated by furrows, and giving 

 lodgment for the mosses, and liverworts, and larger lichens, 

 which abound in the deep shades of the primeval woods. The 

 yellow birch is often found seven or eight feet in circumference, 

 measured above the bulging of the roots, and with only two or 



