BETULACEA. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 53 
BETULA KENAICA. 
Red Birch. Black Birch. 
STROBILES cylindrical, erect, or spreading. Leaves ovate, acute, or acuminate, 
cuneate at the base. 
Betula Kenaica, Evans, Bot. Gazette, xxvii. 481 (1899). 
A tree, from thirty to forty feet in height, with a trunk from twelve to twenty inches in diameter 
covered with thin more or less furrowed very dark brown or nearly black bark, and wide-spreading 
branches. The branchlets, which are rather stout and marked by numerous small pale lenticels, are 
bright red-brown during two or three years, and then gradually become darker. The leaves are ovate, 
acute, or acuminate, broadly cuneate or somewhat rounded at the entire base, and irregularly, coarsely, 
and often doubly serrate above, with spreading teeth ; when they unfold they are puberulous on the 
upper surface and ciliate on the margins, with short soft white deciduous hairs, and in summer they are 
glabrous, dark dull green on the upper surface, pale yellow-green on the lower surface, from an inch 
and a half to two inches long and from an inch to an inch and three quarters wide, with slender 
yellow midribs, four pairs of thin primary veins, reticulate vemlets conspicuous on both surfaces, and 
slender petioles from three quarters of an inch to an inch in length. The scales of the staminate 
flowers are ovate, acute and apiculate at the apex, puberulous on the outer surface, and dark red- 
brown.’ The pistillate aments are from one third to one half of an inch in length and about one 
sixteenth of an inch in width, and are borne on slender glandular pubescent peduncles from one half to 
three quarters of an inch in length, and bibracteolate, with scarious caducous bractlets; their scales 
are acuminate, light green, ciliate on the margins, with long white hairs, and strongly reflexed at the 
middle, and the styles are bright red. The strobiles are cylindrical and about an inch long, and their 
scales are cuneate at the base, longer than broad, and ciliate on the margins with broad lateral lobes 
much shorter than the oblong-ovate terminal lobe which is narrowed and rounded at the apex. The 
nut is oval and somewhat narrower than its thin wing. 
Betula Kenaica inhabits the Kenai peninsula in the vicinity of Cook Inlet, where it grows with 
Picea Sitchensis, and Kadiak Island. It was discovered during the summer of 1897 at Sunrise near 
the head of Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet by Dr. Walter H. Evans,’ and two years later it was distin- 
guished on Kadiak Island by Dr. F. V. Coville of the Harriman Alaska Expedition.? 
1 T have seen only young staminate aments of this tree collected them to Congress. With Professor Coulter he has published A 
when they were about an inch long and soon after the opening of Revision of North American Cornacee in the fifteenth volume of 
the lowest flowers. The Botanical Gazette, and he is the author of a paper on The 
2 Walter Harrison Evans (June 3, 1863) was born at Delphi, 
Indiana, where he was educated in the common and high schools. 
In 1882 he entered Wabash College at Crawfordsville, Indiana. 
Graduating in 1887, he took a post-graduate course in his college, 
becoming assistant to Dr. J. M. Coulter, at that time professor of 
botany, and receiving in 1890 the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 
In 1891-92 Dr. Evans made collections of Cacti in the region adja- 
cent to the boundary between the United States and Mexico for 
the Division of Botany of the United States Department of Agri- 
culture, and since 1892 he has been the botanical editor of The 
Experiment Station Record published by that dep In 1897 
Dr. Evans was sent to Alaska as a special commissioner to inves- 
tigate the agricultural resources of the territory and to report on 
Effect of Copper Sulphate on Seed Germination in Bulletin No. 10 of 
the Division of Vegetable Pathology, United States Department of 
Agriculture, and of a number of miscellaneous papers. 
8 «JT found Betula Kenaica abundant on a forested gravel point 
in Halibut Cove, Kachemak Bay, Cook Inlet, growing twenty-five 
to thirty-five feet high and a foot in diameter. There are a few 
trees still standing back of the village of Kadiak on Kadiak Island, 
and I found an abundance of them in one spot in the valley at 
the head of English or Woman’s Bay, eight miles south of Kadiak 
village, the trees at this point having a maximum diameter of 
about one foot and a height of about twenty feet.” 
litt.) 
(Coville, in 
