THE HOP HORNBEAM OR IRONWOOD 



A MONG all the leaves of the forest it would be difficult to find one of more exquisitely 

 / \ beautiful texture than that of the Hop Hornbeam. The blade is thin and trans- 

 X. -m. lucent, showing a delicate tracery of veins and veinlets. The margin is doubly, 

 yet finely, serrate, and the general outline is a beautiful, irregular oval, carried upward 

 to an acuminate tip. The petiole is very short and the base of the leaf is slightly heart- 

 shaped. These leaves are held on long, slender, interlacing branches which give the tree 

 a distinctive character. Through most of the year these branches are tipped with pairs 

 or trios of slender, cylindrical catkin-buds, which develop early in spring into long, pendent 

 pollen-bearing catkins that yield the pollen which fertilizes the seed-bearing catkins, sent 

 out along the sides of the twigs at the same period. As the months go by the latter mature 

 into curious, hop-like fruits that give to this Hornbeam its definitive adjective. 



In October the leaves gradually turn to a beautiful yellow color and drop lightly 

 to the ground, revealing a tree which is easily recognized throughout the winter by the 

 extraordinary slenderness of its interlacing twigs and the characteristic bark of the trunk 

 and larger branches. The bark is thickly furrowed with narrow vertical grooves, the bark 

 between the grooves being in short, narrow scales, each scale usually raised at the ends but 

 tightly fastened in the middle. The hardness of the wood has been proverbial for hundreds 

 of years and has led the tree to be called Ironwood perhaps more commonly than by any 

 other name. The wood is especially useful in the manufacture of tools where great strength 

 is required. 



The Hop Hornbeam is commonly a tree of the underwoods. It occurs very far 

 north in Canada, south to Florida and Texas, and reaches its greatest development in the 

 Southwestern States, where the trees sometimes attain a height of fifty or sixty feet, 

 although commonly they are only half this height. 



A closely related tree called the Western Ironwood (Ostrya Knowltoni) occurs in 

 Arizona although so far as now known but in one locality. It reaches a height of thirty 

 feet and a trunk diameter of eighteen inches. 



(98) 



