CUPULIFERZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 3] 
OSTRYA. 
FLOWERS unisexual, monecious, apetalous, the staminate naked in long pendulous 
aments ; stamens 3 to 14; the pistillate in erect lax aments ; calyx denticulate, adnate 
to the inferior two-celled ovary, surrounded by a bract and two bractlets; ovule soli- 
tary in each cell, suspended. Fruit, a nut inclosed in a sack-like involucre formed 
from the accrescent bract and bractlets of the flower, and loosely imbricated into a 
strobile. Leaves alternate, stipulate, deciduous. 
Ostrya, Scopoli, Fl. Carn. ed. 2, ii. 243 (1772).— Endlicher, Carpinus, Linnzus, Gen. 292 (in part) (1737).— Adanson, 
Gen. 274.— Meisner, Gen. 346. — Bentham & Hooker, Fam. Pl. ii. 375 (in part). — A. L. de Jussieu, Gen. 409 
Gen. iii. 406.— Prantl, Engler & Prantl Pflanzenfam. (in part). — Baillon, Hist. Pl. vi. 255 (in part). 
iii. pt. i. 43. 
Small trees, with watery juice, scaly bark, hard close-graimed wood, slender terete branchlets, 
elongated conical buds formed in early summer and covered by numerous imbricated scales, those of 
the inner ranks accrescent and marking in falling the base of the branch with narrow ring-like scars, the 
lowest sterile, the upper the stipules of the first leaves, and fibrous roots. Leaves open and concave in 
the bud,’ obliquely plicate along the primary veins, alternate, ovate, acute, doubly serrate, penniveined, 
the veins running obliquely to the points of the teeth, petiolate, deciduous, leaving in falling small 
semioval or crescent-shaped slightly oblique leaf-scars displaying the ends of three equidistant fibro- 
vascular bundle-scars. Stipules strap-shaped or obovate-oblong, scarious, infolding the leaf in the bud, 
caducous. Flowers appearing in early spring with the unfolding of the leaves, the staminate in long 
clustered pendulous aments developed in early summer from lateral buds near the ends of short lateral 
branchlets of the year, sessile or pedunculate, and naked and conspicuous during the winter, the pistillate 
in erect lax aments terminal on leafy branches of the year. Staminate flower composed of from three 
to fourteen stamens crowded on a pilose torus adnate to the base of a broadly ovate concave scale 
of the ament, which is rounded and abruptly contracted at the apex into a short point, ciliate on the 
margins and longer than the stamens ; filaments filiform, abbreviated, two-branched near the apex, each 
branch bearing a one-celled erect oblong extrorse half-anther tipped with a cluster of long hairs, the 
cell opening longitudinally, or rarely undivided and bearing a two-celled anther.  Pistillate flowers 
inclosed in hairy sack-like bodies formed by the union of a bract and two bractlets, and inserted in 
pairs on the base of the elongated ovate acute leafy ciliate scales of the ament persistent until 
midsummer, the lowest scales sterile. Calyx adnate to the ovary, dentate on the free narrow border. 
Ovary inferior, two-celled after fecundation, crowned with a short style divided into two elongated 
linear subulate spreading branches stigmatic on the inner face and exserted above the leafy scale ; 
ovule solitary in each cell, suspended, anatropous, the micropyle superior. Fruiting involucres formed 
by the enlargement of the united bract and bractlets of the flowers, closed and flattened, bladder-like, 
ovate, acute, slightly unequal on the margins, pale, membranaceous, much longer than the nut, con- 
spicuously longitudinally veined, reticulate-venulose, apiculate and hairy at the apex, hirsute at the 
base with sharp rigid stinging hairs,* imbricated into a short strobile fully grown at midsummer and 
1 Ostrya does not form a terminal bud, the end of the branch 2 Henry, Nov. Act. Acad. Ces. Leop. xviii. 530, t. 39. 
dying in summer and leaving during the winter a minute dark cir- 8 In handling a branch of Ostrya in summer and autumn the 
cular scar at the side of the upper axillary bud which prolongs the stiff sharp-pointed one-celled hairs which surround the base of the 
branch in the following spring (Foerste, Bull. Torrey Bot. Club, xx. fruiting involucre become detached and, sticking into the flesh, 
164, t. 148, f. 16). 
