GO TREES OF NEW ENGLAND. 



each subtending a green, ovate, acute, ciliate, deciduous scale, 

 each scale subtending two pistils with long reddish styles. 



Fruit.- In terminal catkins made conspicuous by the pale 

 green, much enlarged, and leaf-like 3-lobed bracts, each bract 

 subtending a dark-colored, sessile, striate nutlet. 



Horticultural Value. Hardy throughout New England; pre- 

 fers moist, rich soil, near running water, on the edges of wet 

 land or on rocky slopes in shade. Its irregular outline and 

 curiously ridged trunk make it an interesting object in land- 

 scape plantations. It is not often used, however, because it 

 is seldom grown in nurseries, and collected plants do not bear 

 removal well. Propagated from the seed. 



BETULA. 



Inflorescence. In scaly catkins, sterile and fertile on the 

 same tree, appearing with or before the leaves from shoots 

 of the previous season, sterile catkins terminal and lateral, 

 formed in summer, erect or inclined in the bud, drooping 

 when expanded in the following spring ; sterile flowers usu- 

 ally 3, subtended by a shield-shaped bract with 2 bractlets ; 

 each flower consisting of a 1-scaled calyx and 2 anthers, 

 which appear to be 4 from the division of the filaments 

 into two parts, each of which bears an anther cell : fertile 

 catkins erect or inclined at the end of very short leafy 

 branchlets ; fertile flowers subtended by a 3-lobed bract 

 falling with the nuts ; bractlets none ; calyx none ; corolla 

 none ; consisting of 2-3 ovaries crowned with 2 spreading 

 styles. 



