FLORA OF THE MOUNTAIN. 221 



plant is a superb tree, often five feet in diameter and 125 feet 

 high. It irrows in groves or mingled with other tall trees, 

 and rivals the tallest of them in height. When it grows in 

 this manner it exhibits the ])cculiar shape of the mountain 

 trees growing in dense woods. This form of trees has 

 been brought about by the circumstance of their original 

 growth. The mass of foliage rises in a plane forming 

 the tops of the trees. As the lower limbs become shaded 

 and atrophied, they die and drop off, and at last branch- 

 buds cease to be developed and branches to grow, the trunks 

 or stems extending upward as naked symmetrical shafts of 

 mathematical regularity, the terminal branches forming a 

 leafy summit or canopy, which continues to mount higher and 

 higher as the mass of the forest rises in the air. 



In open woods and low-lands of the State, this tree grows 

 in a widely-spreading umbrageous mass, the stem dividing 

 into a number of branches, the whole tree scarcely attaining 

 half the height of the same plant struggling in the depths 

 of the mountain forests. A stem without a branch for 

 ninety feet, and as straight as a gun-barrel, is a common 

 form of the plant in these woods. This is the "cherry- 

 lumber" tree, so much valued as cabinet material. 



Of the allied genus Prunus, the mountain has one species, 

 the "Americana." It has the ordinary characters of the tree 

 elsewhere. 



Beecii-tree. — Of the genus Fagus, the continent, and, 

 consequently, the Alleghany, has but one species, and that 

 is the Fagus ferruginea, or American beech. The mode 

 of growth of this tree in the mountain forests is so entirely 

 different from the shape of the tree elsewhere that it seems 

 to have lost its identity. This is so markedly the case that 

 common ob.servers have made several beeches of the botani- 

 cal one species, as "white" and "red," "mountain" and 

 "water" beech.* These varieties are of course produced by 



* "When the heart-wood, [duramen,) which is a flesh-red color, is 

 large iu proportion to the white, {alburnum,) or sap-wood, it is called 



ID- 



