BETULACER, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 81 
ALNUS MARITIMA. 
Seaside Alder. 
LEAvVEs oblong, ovate or obovate, dark green and lustrous above, pale yellow-green 
below. Flowers autumnal. 
Alnus maritima, Nuttall, Sylva, i. 34, t. 10 bis (1842).— Alnus oblongata, Regel, Nouv. Mém. Soc. Nat. Mose. xiii. 
Canby, Proc. Phil. Acad. 1864, 18; Bot. Gazette, vi. 171, t. 6, f. 3-9 (Monographia Betulacearum) (in part) 
270. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. 8. (not Willdenow) (1860). — Dippel, Handb. Laubholzk. 
ix. 162 (excl. hab. Manchuria and Japan); Garden and ii. 151. — Koehne, Deutsche Dendr. 113. 
Forest, iv. 268, f. 47.— Mayr, Wald. Nordam. 185.— Alnus maritima, a typica, Regel, Bull. Soc. Nat. Mosc. 
Watson & Coulter, Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 473. — Herder, XXXVil. pt. ii. 427 (Gattungen Betula und Alnus) (1865) ; 
Act, Hort. Petrop. xii. 73 (Pl. Radd.) (excl. y arguta). De Candolle Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 186. 
Betula-Alnus maritima, Marshall, Arbust. Am. 20 (1785). 
A tree, occasionally thirty feet in height, with a tall straight trunk four or five mches in diameter, 
and slender spreading branches which form a narrow round-topped head ; or more often shrubby, with 
numerous slender spreading stems fifteen or twenty feet high. The bark of the trunk is about an 
eighth of an inch thick and is smooth and light brown or brown tinged with gray. The branchlets are 
slender and slightly zigzag, and when they first appear are light preen and hairy; during their first 
summer they are pale yellow-green, very lustrous, slightly puberulous, marked with occasional small 
orange-colored lenticels, and covered with minute dark glandular dots; they turn dull light orange or 
reddish brown in the winter, when the pale lenticels become rather conspicuous, and ashy gray often 
slightly tinged with red in the following season. The buds are acute, dark red, coated with pale lustrous 
scurfy pubescence, and about a quarter of an inch long. The leaves are oblong, ovate or obovate, acute, 
acuminate or rounded at the apex, gradually narrowed and wedge-shaped at the base, remotely serrate 
with minute incurved glandular teeth, and somewhat thickened on the slightly undulate margins ; when 
they unfold they are light green tinged with red, hairy on the midribs, veins, and petioles, and coated 
above with pale scurfy pubescence; and when fully grown they are dark green, very lustrous, and 
covered with minute pale glandular dots on the lower surface, three or four inches long and from an 
inch and a half to two inches wide, with stout yellow midribs and primary veins which are prominent 
and marked with dark glands above and are slightly puberulous below, coarse reticulate veinlets, and 
stout grooved yellow glandular puberulous petioles flattened and grooved on the upper side, and from 
one half to three quarters of an inch in length. The stipules are oblong, acute, about an eighth of an 
inch long, dark reddish brown, and caducous. The flower aments appear in July on branches of the 
year, the staminate in short scurfy pubescent glandular punctate racemes from the axils of the upper 
leaves, and the pistillate usually solitary from those of lower leaves, and are fully grown in August or 
early in September, when the flowers expand. While they are growing the staminate aments are covered 
with ovate acute dark green and very lustrous scales slightly ciliate on the margins and furnished at 
the apex with minute red points, and at maturity they are from one and a half to two and a half inches 
in length and from one quarter to nearly one half of an inch in thickness, with dark orange-brown 
scales raised on slender stalks from an eighth to a quarter of an inch long, and bright orange-colored 
stamens, and are borne on slender peduncles sometimes a third of an inch in length. The pistillate 
aments are raised on stout pubescent peduncles, and before opening are bright red at the apex and light 
green below, with ovate acute scales slightly ciliate on the margins; when the styles protrude from 
between the scales the aments are about an eighth of an inch long; during the autumn and winter they 
