V. 1. THE WHITE BIRCH. 213 



and a most effectual screen against heat and cold ; and it is 

 almost imperishable. 



Sp. 5. The White Birch. B. populifolla. Aiton. 



Leaves and strobile figured by Michaux, Sylva, II, Plate 71 ; the tree, leaves 

 and aments, by Loudon, Arboretum, VII, Plate 235. 



The white birch, or the little gray birch, as it is often more 

 descriptively called, can be mistaken for no other tree except 

 the canoe birch, from which it is distinguished by the grayish 

 color and chalky surface of its harder bark, and by the marked 

 triangular form of its leaf, which tapers to a very long, slender 

 point. It is a tree of third rate, never, so far as I have seen, 

 even in the most favorable situations, attaining the height of 

 forty feet, and usually not over twenty-five or thirty. One of 

 the largest I have ever seen measured four feet and two inches 

 in girth at the ground, and two feet eight inches at three feet 

 above. It is, in many parts of New England, beyond whose 

 limits it is not known to extend far, southward or northward, 

 the most common companion of the pitch pine, in the poorest 

 sandy soils. But, independently of its associations with ster- 

 ility, which it is well entitled to, as it springs up and grows 

 rapidly in spots deserted by every other deciduous tree, — it is 

 a graceful and beautiful object, enjoying, in an eminent de- 

 gree, the lightness and airiness of the birch family, and spread- 

 ing out its glistening leaves on the ends of a very slender and 

 often pensile spray, with an indescribable softness. So that 

 Coleridge might have called it, as he did the corresponding Eu- 

 ropean species, 



: "most beautiful 



Of forest trees — the lady of the woods." 



It often makes a striking appearance at a little distance, from its 

 delicate and elegantly cut, feathery foliage, and the strong con- 

 trast between the white trunk and the black branches, and the 

 bright speckles of the sun's light thrown back from the glossy 

 leaves. 



The stem is erect, or more usually ascending, clothed with a 

 chalky white or grayish white bark, with a triangular dusky 



