99 2< The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



of Prunus serotina. It produces seed once in three or four years, and does not 

 bear shade well, though young trees will sprout from the stump. The timber is 

 heavy, hard, and strong, dark brown in colour, and takes a good polish. 



I saw a very fine tree of this species in a garden at Lancaster, Massachusetts, 

 62 feet by 10 feet, dividing at 3 feet into four stems, which were covered with a very 

 pretty ragged yellow and grey bark. 



Betula lenta was introduced into England in 1759, according to Loudon. We 

 are not aware that it has anywhere attained a large size, except at Oakly Park, 

 near Ludlow, the property of the Earl of Plymouth, where on a rich sheltered flat 

 on the banks of the Teme, I found a tree of considerable age, which in August 1908 

 measured about 60 feet by 4 feet 9 inches. The trees in Kew Gardens are about 

 20 feet in height. A specimen at High Canons, Herts, measured 36 feet high by 

 4 feet 2 inches in girth, and bore fruit in 1907. Another at Bicton, 38 feet by 

 3 feet 5 inches, is growing in the Arboretum walk, near the Paper Birch. 



Beer is sometimes obtained in America by fermenting the sugary sap of this 

 tree. Oil of birch, which is made on a considerable scale in Pennsylvania, is a more 

 important product. This is obtained by distilling the wood, 1 one ton of which 

 yields about 4 lbs. of oil. This oil is nearly identical, both in chemical and 

 physical properties, with oil of winter-green, which is manufactured in the same 

 district ; and commercial oil of winter-green is a mixture of the two oils in varying 

 proportions. (H. J. E.) 



BETULA FONTINALIS 



Betula fontinalis, Sargent, in Bat. Gazette, xxxi. 239 (1901), and Trees N. Amer. 207 (1905). 

 Betula occidentalis, Sargent, Silva N. Amer. ix. 65, t. 453 (1896) (not Hooker); Winkler, Betulacece, 

 86 (1904); Schneider, Laubholzkunde, i. 114 (1904). 



A tree, occasionally attaining 40 feet in height and 3 or 4 feet in girth, more 

 commonly shrubby, with many branching stems. Bark about \ inch thick, dark 

 brown, shining, not separating into thin layers, marked by pale brown horizontal 

 lenticels. Young branchlets viscid, densely covered with resinous glands, inter- 

 spersed with long, pale hairs ; older branchlets dark in colour and roughened with 

 the persistent glands. Leaves about \\ inch long, and 1 to i|- inch broad, thin in 

 texture, broadly or narrowly ovate ; rounded, truncate or subcordate, and often 

 unequal at the base ; acute at the apex ; margin ciliate, sharply and doubly serrate ; 

 nerves six to eight pairs ; both surfaces glandular with scattered long hairs, at 

 first paler beneath, becoming glabrescent ; petiole, \ inch, glandular, glabrescent. 



Fruiting-catkins, about 1 inch long, \ inch in diameter, cylindrical, on slender 

 glandular stalks ; scales pubescent, ciliate, with the three lobes triangular and nearly 

 equal in size, the lateral lobes divergent ; nutlets with broad wings. 



This species is readily distinguished by its conspicuously glandular branchlets 

 and its small, thin leaves, which are variable in width, and in the form of the base. 



1 Cf. article by H. Trimble in Garden and Forest, viii. 303 (1895), where the process is described. The oil of birch is 

 contained in the inner bark only ; and on this account the wood used in distillation is obtained from small trees, usually 

 coppice shoots. A 



