BETULACE.E 



short pendulous branches, and branchlets at first light green, slightly viscid, marked by 

 scattered orange-colored oblong lenticels and covered with long pale hairs, dark orange 

 color and glabrous or pubescent during the summer, becoming dull red in their first winter, 

 gradually growing dark orange-brown, lustrous for four or five years and ultimately covered 

 with the white papery bark of older branches. Winter-buds obovoid, acute, about \' long, 

 pubescent below the middle and coated with resinous gum at midsummer, dark chestnut- 

 brown, glabrous and slightly resinous during the winter, their inner scales becoming strap- 

 shaped, rounded at apex, about \' long and \' wide. Bark on young trunks and large 

 limbs thin, creamy white or rarely bronze color or orange-brown and lustrous on the outer 

 surface, bright orange color on the inner, marked by long narrow slightly darker colored 

 raised lenticels, separating into thin papery layers, pale orange color when first exposed to 

 the light, becoming on old trunks for a few feet above the ground sometimes \' thick, dull 

 brown or nearly black, sharply and irregularly furrowed and broken on the surface into 

 thick closely appressed scales. Wood light, strong, hard, tough, very close-grained, light 

 brown tinged with red, with thick nearly white sap wood; largely used for spools, shoe-lasts, 

 pegs, and in turnery, the manufacture of wood-pulp, and for fuel. The tough resinous 

 durable bark impervious to water is used by all the northern Indians to cover their canoes 

 and for baskets, bags, drinking-cups, and other small articles, and often to cover their 

 wigwams in winter. 



Distribution. Rich wooded slopes and the borders of streams, lakes, and swamps 

 scattered through forests of other trees; Labrador to the southern shores of Hudson's Bay, 

 and southward to Long Island, New York, northern Pennsylvania, central Michigan, 

 northern Wisconsin, northern-central Iowa, eastern Nebraska, North and South Dakota 

 and Wyoming; common in the maritime provinces of Canada and North of the Great Lakes, 

 and in northern New England and New York; small and comparatively rare in the coast 

 region of southern New England and southward; on the highest mountains of New Eng- 

 land and northward the var. minor S. Wats and Cov. is common as a small shrub. 



Often planted in the northeastern states as an ornamental tree. 



X Betula Sandbergii Britt. and its f. maxima Rosend. generally believed to be natural 

 hybrids of B. papyri/era and B. pumila var. glandulifera Regl. occur in Tamarack swamps 

 in Hennepin County, Minnesota. 



Passing into the following varieties. 



Betula papyrifera var. cordifolia Fern. 



Leaves ovate, abruptly pointed and acuminate or acute at apex, cordate at base, coarsely 

 doubly serrate, glabrous or pilose on the under side of the midrib and veins, often furnished 



Fig. 200 



