708 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



and on the primary veins, 2'-5' long, ^-3' wide, turning in the autumn before fall- 

 ing bright scarlet on the upper surface only; their petioles slender or stout, terete 

 or wing-margined, ciliate, ^'-1^' long, and often bright red. Flowers appearing 

 when the leaves are about one third grown on slender pubescent or tomentose 

 peduncles ^'-1^' long, the males in many-flowered dense or lax compound heads, the 



Ht 5ii 



females in 2 to several-flowered clusters, sessile in the axils of conspicuous often 

 foliaceous bracts, and furnished with 2 smaller acute hairy bractlets; calyx of the 

 staminate flower disciform ; petals thick, ovate-oblong, acute, rounded at the apex, 

 erect or slightly spreading, early deciduous; stamens exserted in the staminate flower, 

 shorter than the petals in the pistillate flower; stigma stout, exserted, reflexed above 

 the middle, in the staminate flower. Fruits ripening in October, 1-3 from each 

 flower-cluster, ovoid, |^' |' long, dark blue, with thin acrid flesh; stone light brown, 

 ovoid, rounded at the base, pointed at the apex, terete, or more or less flattened, and 

 10-12-ribbed, with narrow indistinct pale ribs rounded on the back. 



A tree, occasionally 100 high, with a trunk sometimes 5 in diameter, many slender 

 pendulous tough flexible branches forming a head sometimes short, cylindrical, and 

 flat-topped, sometimes low and broad, or on trees crowded in the forest narrow, 

 pyramidal, or conical, and sometimes inversely conical and broad and flat at the top, 

 branchlets at first light green to orange color, and in their first winter nearly gla- 

 brous or pale or rufous-pubescent, light red-brown marked by minute scattered pale 

 lenticels and by small lunate leaf-scars displaying the ends of 3 conspicuous groups 

 of fibro-vascular bundles, later becoming darker and developing short stout spur- 

 like lateral branchlets, and long thick hard roots; generally in the northern and 

 extreme southern states much smaller, and rarely more than 50-60 tall. Winter- 

 buds obtuse, ^' long, with ovate acute apieulate dark red pnberulous imbricated 

 scales, those of the inner ranks accrescent, bright-colored at maturity, and marking 

 the base of the branchlet with obscure ring-like scars. Bark of the trunk f'-l^' 

 thick, light brown often tinged with red, and deeply fissured, the surface of the 

 ridges covered with small irregularly shaped scales. Wood heavy, soft, strong, 

 very tough, not durable, light yellow or nearly white, with thick lighter colored 

 sapwood of 80-100 layers of annual growth; used for the hubs of wheels, rollers in 

 glass factories, ox-yokes, wharf-piles, and sometimes for the soles of shoes. 



