628 AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



related to hop hornbeam (Ostrya virginiana). It grows from Quebec, 

 to Florida and from Dakota to Texas, reaching its largest 

 size in eastern Texas where it is sometimes sixty feet high 

 and two in diameter, though this size is unusual. Few trees 

 develop a bole less acceptable to lumbermen. In addition to being 

 short, crooked, twisted, and covered with limbs, it is nearly always 

 ribbed and fluted, so that a log, even if but a few feet long, is apt to be 

 almost any shape except round. The thick sapwood is pale white, 

 heart pale brown. The annual rings are usually easily seen, but they 

 are vague, because of so little difference between the springwood and 

 summerwood; diffuse-porous; medullary rays thin and usually seen only 

 in the aggregate as a white luster where wood is sawed radially. The 

 uses of this wood are many, but the amounts very small. It is made into 

 singletrees and ax and hammer handles in Michigan, wagon felloes in 

 Texas and other parts of the Southwest; levers and other parts of agri- 

 cultural implements in various localities. It seldom goes to sawmills, 

 is generally marketed in the form of bolts, and is hard, stiff, and strong. 



