320 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



bark is a reddish green, striated with ash ; the branches are in 

 imperfect whorls, and stand nearly at right angles to the trunk, 

 curving slightly from branchlet to branchlet. On old trees, the 

 appearance of regular whorls in the branches is lost, from the 

 smaller ones being outstripped by the larger, and some of them 

 dying ; and the graceful curvature is lost, and the branches are 

 bare and crooked. The spray is long and irregular, forming a 

 sharp angle with the small branches, and curving upwards. It 

 is of a yellowish green color and downy surface. The terminal 

 buds are large, ovate, and invested at base with three or four 

 scales of the color of the twig. 



The leaves of the same tree are remarkable for their variety 

 of form. They are supported on petioles of one quarter or one 

 fifth the length of the leaf, are acute or wedge-shaped at base, 

 often entire, sometimes oval with an imperfect lateral lobe, 

 more frequently, especially towards the ends of the branches, 

 dilated and three-lobed. They are of a pleasant green: in the 

 autumn becoming a delicate buff, leather yellow or orange. 

 The scales of the buds, which are covered with down, on ex- 

 panding, remain to protect the branch of leaves and flowers 

 Avhich they enclosed, and which are alike clothed with a hairy 

 or silken down. This disappears from the upper surface of the 

 leaves as they advance in age. The under surface is marked 

 by prominent veins. The flowers are on pendulous or nodding, 

 slender, clustered racemes, in the axil of the bud-scales, below 

 the leaves, around the base of the recent shoots. Each partial 

 flower stalk has, at its base, a slender, thread-like, villose bract, 

 as long as the foot-stalk. In the sterile flowers, the calyx usually 

 has six yellowish, oblong, petal-like pieces, united at base to 

 form a cup, inside of which and opposite them are six stamens, 

 forming one circle, and inside them and opposite the alternate 

 ones, a circle of three stamens, oti each side of each one of 

 which is an orange-colored gland on a short stalk. The an- 

 thers are short, having two cells opening inward, and above, 

 two smaller cells opening obliquely upwards. The style, swell- 

 ing at base, stands freely in the centre, but with no ovule within. 



The fertile flowers have only six short, imperfect stamens, in 

 a single series. Ovary roundish, stigma on a short style. The 



