SALICACE^E 125 



flower-buds. Bark on young trunks divided by shallow fissures into broad flat ridges sepa- 

 rating on the surface into thick plate-like scales, becoming on old trunks f'-l' thick, light 

 brown tinged with red, and broken into long narrow plates attached only at the middle and 

 sometimes persistent for many years. Wood dull brown, with thin lighter brown sapwood 

 of 12-15 layers of annual growth; now often manufactured into lumber in the valley of the 

 Mississippi River and in the Gulf states, and as black poplar used in the interior finish of 

 buildings. 



Distribution. Southington, Connecticut, and Northport, Long Island, southward near 

 the coast to southern Georgia, and the valley of the lower Apalachicola River, Florida, 

 through the Gulf states to western Louisiana, and through Arkansas to southeastern Mis- 

 souri, western Kentucky and Tennessee, southern Illinois and Indiana, and in central and 

 northern Ohio (Williams, Otta-wa and Lake Counties) ; in the north Atlantic states in low 

 wet swamps, rare and local; more common south and west on the borders of river swamps; 

 very abundant and of its largest size in the valley of the lower Ohio and in southeastern 

 Missouri, eastern Arkansas, and western Mississippi. 



4. Populus tacamahacca Mill. Balsam. Tacamahac. 

 Populus balsamifera Du Roi, not L. 



Leaves ovate-lanceolate, gradually narrowed and acuminate at apex, cordate or rounded 

 at base, or narrow-elliptic and acute or acuminate at the ends, finely crenately serrate, with 

 slightly thickened revolute margins, coated when they unfold with the gummy secretions 



Fig. 119 



of the bud, glabrous, or puberulous on the under side of the midrib, becoming thin and firm 

 in texture, deep dark green and lustrous above, pale green or glaucous and more or less 

 rusty and conspicuously reticulate- venulose below, 3'-5' long, l^'-3' wide, with thin veins 

 running obliquely almost to the margins; petioles slender, terete, \\' long, glabrous or 

 rarely puberulous. Flowers : aments long-stalked, the pistillate becoming 4 '-5' long before 

 the fruit ripens, glabrous or pubescent; scales broadly obovate, light brown and scarious, 

 often irregularly 3-parted at apex, cut into short thread-like brown lobes; disk of the 

 staminate flower oblique, short-stalked; stamens 20-30, with short filaments and large 

 light red anthers; disk of the pistillate flower cup-shaped; ovary ovoid, slightly 2-lobed, 

 with two nearly sessile large oblique dilated crenulate stigmas. Fruit ovoid-oblong, acute 

 and often curved at apex, 2-valved, light brown, about \'-\ r long, nearly sessile or short- 

 stalked, i' I' in length; seeds oblong-obovoid, pointed at apex, narrowed and truncate at 

 base, light brown, about tV long. 



A tree, often 100 high, with a tall trunk 6-7 in diameter, stout erect branches usually 



