heart-shaped or rounded at the base. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
BETULACE. 
BETULA LENTA. 
Cherry Birch. Black Birch. 
SrroBiLes oblong-ovoid, glabrous, sessile, erect. 
Bark close, dark brown, sweet-aromatic. 
Betula lenta, Linnzus, Spec. 983 (1753). — Miller, Dict. 
ed. 8, No. 3. — Muenchhausen, Hausv. v. 113. — Wang- 
enheim, Beschreib. Nordam. Holz. 94. — Lamarck, Dict. 
i453. — Marshall, Arbust. Am. 19. —Schoepf, Mat. Med. 
Amer. 134.— Castiglioni, Viag. negli Stati Uniti, ii. 207.— 
Willdenow, Berl. Baumz. 41; Spec. iv. pt. i. 464; Hnum. 
981. — Persoon, Syn. ii. 572. — Wendland, Coll. t. 40. — 
Desfontaines, Hist. Arb. ii. 477. — Du Mont de Courset, 
Bot. Cult. ed. 2, vi. 408. — Stokes, Bot. Mat. Med. iv. 
368. — Nouveau Duhamel, iii. 205. — Michaux f. Hist. 
Arb. Am. ii. 147, t. 4. — Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. ii. 621. — 
Bigelow, Fl. Boston. 231.— Nuttall, Gen. ii. 218. — 
Hayne, Dendr. Fl. 167. — Elliott, Sx. ii. 617. — Watson, 
Dendr. Brit. ii. 144, t. 144. — Sprengel, Syst. iii. 854. — 
Leaves ovate or oblong-ovate, 
iv. pt. ii. 20. — Darlington, £7. Cestr. ed. 3, 275. — Die- 
trich, Syn. v. 303. Chapman, Fl. 428. — Curtis, Rep. 
Geolog. Surv. N. Car. 1860, iii. 74. — Regel, Nouv. Mém. 
Soc. Nat. Mose. xiii. 125, t. 13, f. 15-18 (Monographia 
Betulacearum) (excl. vars. B and y); Bull. Soc. Nat. Mose. 
Exxviii. pt. ii. 417 (Gattungen Betula und Alnus); De 
Candolle Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 179 (excel. var. 8B). — K. Koch, 
Dendr. ii. pt. i. 639. — Ridgway, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. 
v. 85. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U.S. 
ix. 162. — Lauche, Deutsche Dendr. ed. 2, 272. — Watson 
& Coulter, Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 471. — Dippel, Handb. 
Laubholzk. ii. 185, £. 88. — Koehne, Deutsche Dendr. 107. 
Betula nigra, Du Roi, Ods. 30 (not Linneus) (1771); 
Harbk. Baumz. i. 93. — Wangenheim, Nordam. Holz. 35, 
t. 15, f. 34. 
Betula carpinifolia, Ehrhart, Beitr. vi. 99 (1791). — Du 
Roi, Harbk. Baumz. ed. 2, i. 145. — Willdenow, Enum. 
981; Berl. Baumz. ed. 2, 59. — Michaux, Fl. Bor.-Am. 
ii. 181. 
Guimpel, Otto & Hayne, Addild. Holz. 105, t. 83.— 
Hooker, FU. Bor.-Am. ii. 156. — Spach, Ann. Sct. Nat. sér. 
2, xv. 190 (Revisio Betulacearum); Hist. Vég. xi. 241. — 
Torrey, Fl. N. Y. ii. 200, t. 113.— Emerson, Trees 
Mass. 203; ed. 2, i. 232, t.—Endlicher, Gen. Suppl. 
A tree, seventy or eighty feet in height, with a trunk from two to five feet in diameter, and spicy 
aromatic bark and leaves. The bark of the trunk is from one half to three quarters of an inch in 
thickness, and dark brown slightly tinged with red; on old trunks it is dull, deeply furrowed, and 
broken into large thick irregular plates covered with closely appressed scales; and on young stems and 
on the branches it is close, smooth, and lustrous, and marked with elongated horizontal pale lenticels. 
The slender branches, which are much forked by the final growth of the short spur-like lateral 
branchlets, grow nearly upright on young plants, clothing the stem to the ground, and forming a 
symmetrical broad or narrow pyramid; when the tree is twenty or thirty feet high some of the upper 
branches begin to grow longer than those nearer the ground, and, spreading almost at right angles, and 
becoming pendulous toward their extremities, gradually form the comparatively narrow round-topped 
open graceful head which crowns the tall trunk of the Black Birch when it reaches maturity. The 
branchlets, when they first appear, are light green, slightly viscid, and pilose with scattered pale hairs ; 
they soon begin to turn a dark orange-brown, and become rather lustrous during the summer, and in 
their first winter are bright red-brown, growing darker in their second year, and finally dark dull brown 
slightly tinged with red. The buds are fully grown at midsummer, when they are dark green and very 
lustrous, ovate, acute, and about a quarter of an inch long; they are covered with thin ovate acute 
scales, which in winter are ight chestnut-brown, and rather loosely imbricated, those of the inner ranks 
being chartaceous and tipped with brown, and when fully grown, after the bud unfolds in the spring, 
from one half to three quarters of an inch long. The leaves are ovate or oblong-ovate, acute, or 
acuminate, gradually narrowed and often unequal at the cordate or rounded base, and sharply and 
doubly serrate with slender incurved callous-tipped teeth; when they unfold they are light green, 
