202 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



petioles slender, terete, hairy, about $' long, bright red while young; stipules ovate-lanceo- 

 late, acute, pubescent, hairy on the margins, bright red below, light yellow-green at the 

 apex, I' long. Flowers: staminate aments 1|' long when fully grown, with broadly ovate 

 acute boat-shaped scales green below the middle, bright red above; pistillate aments '- |' 

 long, with ovate acute hairy green scales; styles scarlet. Fruit: nut \' long, its involucre 

 short-stalked, with one of the lateral lobes often wanting, coarsely serrate, but usually on 

 one margin only of the middle lobe, I'-l^' long, nearly 1' wide, crowded on slender terete 

 pubescent red-brown stems 5'-6' in length. 



A bushy tree, rarely 40 high, with a short fluted trunk occasionally 2 in diameter, 

 long slightly zigzag slender tough spreading branches pendulous toward the ends, and 

 furnished with numerous short thin lateral branches growing at acute angles, and branch- 

 lets at first pale green coated with long white silky hairs, orange-brown and sometimes 

 slightly pilose during the summer, becoming dark red and lustrous during their first winter 

 and ultimately dull gray tinged with red. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, about |' long, with 

 ovate acute chestnut-brown scales white and scarious on the margins. Bark light gray- 

 brown, sometimes marked with broad dark brown horizontal bands, T V-f ' thick. Wood 

 light brown, with thick nearly white sap wood; sometimes used for levers, the handles of 

 tools, and other small articles. 



Distribution. Borders of streams and swamps, generally in deep rich moist soil; Nova 

 Scotia and southern and western Quebec to the northern shores of Georgian Bay, south- 

 ward to the shores of Indian River and those of Tampa Bay, Florida, and westward to 

 central Minnesota, eastern Iowa (Sharpy County), eastern Nebraska (reported), eastern 

 Kansas, eastern Oklahoma, and eastern Texas; reappearing on the mountains of southern 

 Mexico and Central America; common in the eastern and central states; most abundant 

 and of its largest size on the western slopes of the southern Alleghany Mountains and 

 in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas. 



2. OSTRYA Scop. Hop Hornbeam. 



Trees, with scaly bark, heavy hard strong close-grained wood, and acute elongated 

 winter-buds formed in early summer and covered by numerous imbricated scales, the 

 inner lengthening after the opening of the bud. Leaves open and concave in the bud; 

 petioles slender, nearly terete, hairy; stipules strap-shaped to oblong-obovate. Flowers: 

 staminate in long clustered sessile or short-stalked aments developed in early summer 

 from lateral buds near the ends of short lateral branchlets of the year and coated while 

 young with hoary tomentum, naked and conspicuous during the winter, and composed of 

 3-14 stamens crowded on a pilose receptacle adnate to the base of an ovate concave scale 

 rounded and abruptly short-pointed at the apex, ciliate on the margins, longer than the 

 stamens; filaments short, 2-branched, each branch bearing a 1-celled half-anther hairy at 

 the apex; pistillate in erect lax aments terminal on short leafy branches of the year, in pairs 

 at the base of an elongated ovate acute leaf-like ciliate scale persistent until midsummer, 

 each flower inclosed in a hairy sack-like involucre formed by the union of a bract and 2 

 bractlets; calyx adnate to the ovary, denticulate on the free narrow border. Nut ovoid, 

 acute, flattened, obscurely longitudinally ribbed, crowned with the remnants of the calyx, 

 marked at the narrow base by a small circular pale scar, inclosed in the much enlarged pale 

 membranaceous conspicuously longitudinally veined reticulate-venulose involucres of the 

 flower, short, pointed and hairy at the apex, hirsute at the base, with sharp rigid stinging 

 hairs, imbricated into a short strobile fully grown at midsummer, and suspended on a 

 slender hairy stem. 



Ostrya is widely distributed in the northern hemisphere from Nova Scotia to Texas, 

 northern Arizona, and to the highlands of southern Mexico and Guatemala in the New 

 World, and through southern Europe and southwestern Asia, and in northern Japan and 

 on the Island of Quelpart in the Old World. Of the four species now recognized two are 

 North American. 



Ostrya is the classical name of the Hop Hornbeam. 



