162 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. SALICACES. 
before the pistillate, are from one and a half to two and a half inches in length, with slender stems 
coated with pale hairs; their scales are pale and scarious below, divided above into from five to six 
small irregular acute lobes and covered with soft light gray hairs, which also clothe the disks of the 
flowers. The stamens vary from six to twelve in number, with short slender filaments and light red 
anthers, and are inserted on the shallow very oblique disk, which is entire on the margins. The ovary 
is oblong-conical, bright green, puberulous, crowned by a short style and spreading stigmas divided 
nearly to the base into elongated filiform lobes, and inclosed at the base in the deep, shghtly oblique, 
crenate disk, persistent under the fruit. This ripens in May as the leaves are unfolding, when the 
pistillate aments are from four to five inches in length ; the capsule is often more or less curved above 
the middle, light green and puberulous, thin-walled, two-valved, about an eighth of an inch long, and 
raised on a slender pubescent stalk. The seed is minute, dark brown, and surrounded by rather short 
snowy white hairs. 
Populus grandidentata, which is a common inhabitant of the forest, usually selecting rich moist 
sandy soil near the borders of swamps and streams, is distributed from Nova Scotia through New 
Brunswick, southern Quebec and Ontario' to northern Minnesota,’ southward through the northern 
states to northern Delaware* and southern Indiana and Ilinois,* and along the Alleghany Mountains to 
North Carolina, and westward to central Kentucky and Tennessee. 
The wood of Populus grandidentata is light, soft, and close-grained, but not strong; it contains 
thin obscure medullary rays and numerous minute scattered open ducts, and is ight brown, with thin 
nearly white sapwood composed of from twenty to thirty layers of annual growth. The specific gravity 
of the absolutely dry wood is 0.4632, a cubic foot weighing 28.87 pounds. In northern New England 
and New York and in Canada it is largely manufactured into wood-pulp, and is occasionally used in 
turnery and for wooden-ware. 
1 Provancher, Flore Canadienne, ii. 533. — Brunet, Cat. Vég. Lig. 8 Tatnall, Cat. Pl. Newcastle Co., Delaware, 70. 
Can. 55. — Bell, Rep. Geolog. Surv. Can. 1879-80, 56°.— Macoun, * Ridgway, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. v. 87 (Populus tremuloides), 
Cat. Can. Pl. 456. xvii. 414, 
2 Macmillan, Metasperme of the Minnesota Valley, 180. 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE. 
Pirate CCCCLXXXVIII. Poruntus GRANDIDENTATA. 
. A flowering branch of the staminate tree, natural size. 
- A staminate flower with its scale, enlarged. 
A flowering branch of the pistillate tree, natural size. 
. A pistillate flower with its scale, enlarged. 
Vertical section of a pistil, enlarged. 
A fruiting branch, natural size. 
. A fruit, enlarged. 
. A fruit with open valves, enlarged. 
WO WAAMA PWD 
. A seed, magnified. 
= 
co) 
. Vertical section of a seed, magnified. 
~~ 
are 
. An embryo, magnified. 
_ 
bo 
. A summer branch, natural size. 
_ 
(JN) 
. A winter branch, natural size. 
