PURUDIEER ZS. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 30 
inches wide, with slender midribs impressed and puberulous above, and light yellow and pubescent 
below, and numerous slender veins usually forked near the margins; they are borne on slender nearly 
terete hairy petioles about a third of an inch long, and turn a clear yellow before falling in the autumn. 
The stipules are strap-shaped, concave, rounded and sometimes apiculate at the apex, ciliate on the 
margins with long pale hairs, hairy on the back, white and scarious, about half an inch long and an 
eighth of an inch broad, and caducous. During the winter the aments of staminate flowers, which first 
appear at midsummer, when they are coated with hoary tomentum, are about half an inch long, with 
light red-brown rather loosely imbricated scales, gradually narrowed into long slender points, and at the 
opening of the flowers in April at the south and early in June at the north, they are two inches long, 
with broadly obovate scales rounded and abruptly contracted at the apex into short points, ciliate on the 
margins with long pale hairs, green tinged with red above the middle, and light brown toward the base. 
The pistillate flowers open rather later than the staminate, and are borne in slender aments about a 
quarter of an inch long and raised on thin hairy peduncles; the scales of the ament are lanceolate, 
acute, light green, and often flushed with red above the middle; they are furnished at the apex with 
tufts of pale hairs, and decrease in size from the lowest, which is nearly half an inch long. The strobile 
of fruit is from an inch and a half to two inches in length, and from two thirds of an inch to nearly an 
inch in width, and is borne on a slender hairy stem nearly an inch long and marked with the scars left 
by the lower leafy sterile scales of the flowering ament and by the bractlets. The nuts ripen in the 
autumn, and are a third of an inch long, about an eighth of an inch wide, rather abruptly narrowed 
below the apex, and much flattened. 
Ostrya Virginiana usually grows on dry gravelly slopes and ridges, often in the shade of Oaks, 
Maples, and other larger trees, and is distributed from the Island of Cape Breton and the shores of 
the Bay of Chaleur, through the valleys of the St. Lawrence and the lower Ottawa rivers, and along 
the northern shores of Lake Huron to western Ontario,’ northern Minnesota, the Black Hills of 
Dakota,” eastern and northern Nebraska? and eastern Kansas,* and southward to northern Florida® and 
eastern Texas. Very common in all this region, it appears to be most abundant and to grow to its 
largest size in southern Arkansas and the adjacent parts of Texas. 
The wood of Ostrya Virginiana is heavy, very strong and hard, tough, exceedingly close-grained, 
durable in contact with the soil, and susceptible of receiving a beautiful polish ; it contains numerous 
obscure medullary rays, and is light brown tinged with red, or often nearly white, with thick pale 
sapwood composed of from forty to fifty layers of annual growth. The specific gravity of the abso- 
lutely dry wood is 0.8284, a cubic foot weighing 51.62 pounds. It is used for fence-posts and many 
small articles like levers, the handles of tools, mallets, and in homeopathic practice." The bark is rich 
in tannin, resembling that of Oak-bark, but probably is not often used commercially.’ 
Ostrya Virginiana was first described by Plukenet® in 1691 from a plant in Bishop Compton’s*” 
garden at Fulham, near London, which had been raised from seed sent from Virginia by the English 
missionary, John Banister. 
Ostrya Virginiana owes its common name to the clusters of fruit that hang from its branches in 
summer and autumn and resemble those of the Hop-vine; it is a handsome shapely tree, with its 
1 Brunet, Cat. Vég. Lig. Can. 51.— Macoun, Cat. Can. Pl. 439. 8 Trimble, Garden and Forest, viii. 293. 
2 Williams, Bull. No. 43, South Dakota Agric. Coll. 107. 9 Carpinus Virginiana florescens, Phyt. t. 156, f. 1. — Miller, 
8 Bessey, Rep. Nebraska State Board Agric. 1894, 110. Dict. No. 4. — Duhamel, Traité des Arbres, i. 128. 
4 Mason, Eighth Bienn. Rep. State Board Agric. Kansas, 271. Aceris cognata Ostrya dicta, florescens, Virginiana, Plukenet, Alm. 
& Ostrya Virginiana was found by Mr. A. H. Curtiss in dry Bot. 7. 
woods near Jacksonville, Florida, in the spring of 1894. Carpinus squamis strobilorum inflatis, Clayton, Fl. Virgin. 118 (not 
6 The Ostrya from southern Mexico and Guatemala referred to Linnzus, Hort. Clif. 447). 
this species (Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. iii. 166) I have not seen. Carpinus Americana, lupuli fructu, Royen, Fl. Leyd. Prodr. 537. 
It is not impossible that it may be the Arizona species. 10 See i. 6. 
7 Millspaugh, Am. Med. Pl. in Homeopathic Remedies, ii. 159, 
t. 159. 
