284 PLANTS AND MAN 



buds have several overlapping scales; birch flowers are borne 

 much like those of poplar and willow, except that the pistillate 

 flowers form 'a short, spike-like catkin instead of the longer, more 

 drooping type found in the former groups. The bark on some 

 species separates into characteristic thin, papery layers, while on 

 others there are conspicuous horizontally elongated lenticels, 

 as in the cherries. 



Three of the birches — the yellow, black, and paper — are 

 important for their hard, strong, close grained woods which are 

 put to a wide variety of uses. All three are considered as medium 



B 



Fig. 201. — Birches have triangular or oval leaves; the staminate flowers 

 are borne in drooping catkins while the pistillate form shorter cone-like struc- 

 tures. A is gray birch, B, black birch. 



sized trees commonly attaining heights of eighty feet, and the 

 leaves all have the same long-oval shape, more or less taper- 

 pointed at the ends. Yellow birch is the most important of the 

 three and produces almost three-fourths of all the timber sold as 

 "birch." It ranges from Newfoundland southwestward to eastern 

 Minnesota, thence southeastward to northern Indiana and Ohio, 

 and southward in the mountains to Georgia. The young twigs 

 and inner bark contain oil of wintergreen, which fact will serve 

 to identify it from all other birches except the black birch from 

 which it may be readily separated by its yellow, satin-like bark \ 

 which peels ofl* in thin papery curls. 



Black birch ranges from southern Maine westward to central 

 Iowa, southward to Virginia, the Garolinas, and Georgia. The 



i 



II 



