eee SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 39 
CARPINUS. 
FLOWERS unisexual, monecious, apetalous, the staminate naked in pendulous 
aments ; stamens 3 to 20; the pistillate in lax semierect aments; calyx denticulate, 
adnate to the inferior two-celled ovary, subtended by a bract and two bractlets; ovule 
solitary in each cell, suspended. Fruit a nut at the base of a leafy open or more or 
less infolded involucre formed from the accrescent bract and bractlets of the flower. 
Carpinus, Linneus, Gen. 292 (excl. Ostrya) (1737). — Adan- trya).— Bentham & Hooker, Gen. iii. 405.— Engler, 
son, Ham. Pl. ii. 375 (excl. Ostrya). — A. L. de Jussieu, Engler & Prantl Pflanzenfam. iii. pt. i. 42. 
Gen. 409 (excl. Ostrya). — Endlicher, Gen. 274, — Meis- Distegocarpus, Siebold & Zuccarini, Abhand. Akad. Miinch. 
ner, Gen. 346. — Baillon, Hist. Pl. vi. 255 (excl. Os- iv. pt. iii. 226 (1846). 
Trees, with watery juice, smooth close or scaly bark, hard close-grained wood, slender terete 
branchlets, buds’ covered with numerous imbricated accrescent scales marking in falling the base of 
the branch with narrow ring-like scars, the lower 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, often cordate at the base, doubly serrate, penniveined, the veins running obliquely to the 
points of the teeth, petiolate, deciduous, leaving in falling small semioval slightly oblique leaf-scars 
marked with the ends of three equidistant fibro-vascular bundles. Stipules strap-shaped or oblong- 
obovate, scarious, infolding the leaf in the bud, caducous. Flowers appearing in early spring with the 
unfolding of the leaves, the staminate in pendulous aments emerging in very early spring from axillary 
buds formed the previous season usually near the ends of short lateral branches of the year and closed 
during the winter, the pistillate in lax semierect aments terminal on leafy branches of the year. Stami- 
nate flower composed of from three to twenty stamens crowded on a pilose torus adnate to the base of 
a subsessile or stipitate broadly ovate and acute or lanceolate concave scale longer than the stamens; 
filaments filiform, abbreviated, two-branched near the apex, each branch bearing a one-celled erect 
oblong extrorse yellow half-anther tipped with a cluster of long hairs, the cell opening longitudinally. 
Pistillate flowers borne in pairs at the base of an ovate acute leafy deciduous scale, each flower 
subtended by a small acute lateral bract with two minute bractlets or appendages at its base. 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 bract and bractlets of 
the flower, fully grown at midsummer, ovate, acute, conspicuously three-lobed or lobulate, thick and 
firm, green and foliaceous, coarsely serrate, sometimes only on one margin, penniveined, reticulate- 
venulose, embracing the base only of the nut, open and spreading, loosely imbricated into a long-stalked 
open cluster (Eucarpinus), or broadly ovate, acute, not at all or slightly lobed at the base or only on 
one side, membranaceous, nearly white, serrate toward the apex with prominent rigid teeth, longitudi- 
nally ribbed, reticulate-venulose, hairy at the base, more or less folded below over the nut and inclosing 
it, closely imbricated into a short or elongated strobile borne on a slender pendulous peduncle furnished 
1 Carpinus does not form a terminal bud, the end of the branch branch the next season (Foerste, Bull. Torrey Bot. Club, xx. 164, t. 
dying in summer and leaving during the following winter « small 148, f. 17). 
circular sear close to the upper axillary bud, which continues the * Henry, Nov. Act. Acad. Ces. Leop. xviii. 529, t. 39, xxii. 183, 
t. 29. 
