421 
MYRICACEJE. (SWEET GALE FAMILY.) 
pwnatifid with many rounded lobes, thin, appearing rather later 
than the flowers. Stipules half heart-shaped. (Named after 
Henry Compton, Bishop of London a century ago, a cultivator 
and patron of botany.) 
1. C. asplenifolia, Ait. — A common shrub, l°-2° high, on 
dry hill-sides, with sweet-scented fern-like leaves. April, May. 
Order 103. BETULACEiE. (Birch Family.) 
Moncecious trees or shrubs , with both kinds of flowers in 
scaly catkins , 2 or 3 under each bract , and no involucre to 
the naked l-celled and 1-seeded often winged nut , which re - 
suits from a 2-celled and 2-ovuled ovary ; — otherwise near¬ 
ly as in the Oak Family. 
1. BETULA, Toum. Birch. 
Sterile flowers 3, and bractlets 2, under each scale or bract of 
the catkins, consisting each of a calyx of one scale and 4 stamens 
attached to its base : filaments very short: anthers 1-celled. Fer¬ 
tile flowers 3 under each 3-lobed bract, with no separate bractlets 
and no calyx, each of a naked ovary with 2 thread-like stigmas, 
becoming a broadly winged and scale-like nutlet or small samara! 
Seed suspended, anatropous. Cotyledons flattish, oblong. — Out¬ 
er bark usually separable in thin horizontal sheets, that of the 
branchlets dotted. Twigs and leaves often spicy-aromatic. Foli¬ 
age mostly thin and light. Buds sessile, scaly. Sterile catkins 
long and drooping, terminal and lateral, formed in summer, re¬ 
maining naked through the succeeding winter, and expanding their 
golden flowers in early spring, preceding the leaves : fertile cat¬ 
kins oblong or cylindrical, lateral, protected by scales through the 
winter, and developed with the leaves. (The ancient Latin name.) 
* Trees with the bark of the trunk white externally , separable in thin 
sheets : petioles long and slender : fertile catkins cylindrical , pedun- 
°led , spreading or drooping. 
}’ popwlifolia, Ait. (American White Birch.) Leaves 
triangular (deltoid), very taper-pointed, , truncate or slightly heart- 
s aped at the broad base, smooth and shining both sides (glandular- 
otte when young) ; lateral lobes of the fruit-bearing bracts oblong 
an curved backward. — Common on poor soils, Maine to Penn , 
eastw ar , not extending westward. — A small and slender, very grace- 
