310 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



stalked fascicles; calyx irregularly divided into 7-9 rounded lobes ciliate on the margins, 

 often somewhat oblique, puberulous on the outer surface, green tinged with red above the 

 middle; anthers bright red; ovary light green, ciliate on the margins with long white hairs; 

 styles light green. Fruit on long pedicels in crowded clusters, ripening as the leaves unfold, 

 ovoid to obovoid-oblong, slightly stipitate, conspicuously reticulate-venulose, \' long, 

 ciliate on the margins, the sharp points of the wings incurved and inclosing the deep notch. 

 A tree, sometimes 100-120 high, with a tall trunk 6-ll in diameter, frequently en- 

 larged at the base by great buttresses, occasionally rising with a straight undivided shaft 

 to the height of 60-80 and separating into short spreading branches, more commonly 

 divided 30-40 from the ground into numerous upright limbs gradually spreading and 

 forming an inversely conic round-topped head of long graceful branches, often 100 or 

 rarely 150 in diameter, and slender branchlets frequently fringing the trunk and its prin- 

 cipal divisions, light green and coated at first with soft pale pubescence, becoming in their 

 first winter light reddish brown, glabrous or sometimes puberulous and marked by scat- 



Fig. 282 



tered pale lenticels, and by large elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars showing the ends of three 

 large equidistant fibro-vascular bundles, later becoming dark reddish brown and finally 

 ashy gray. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, slightly flattened, about f long, with broadly 

 ovate rounded light chestnut-brown glabrous scales, the inner bright green, ovate, acute, 

 becoming on vigorous shoots often nearly V in length. Bark \'-\\' thick, ashy gray, di- 

 vided by deep fissures into broad ridges separating on the surface into thin appressed scales. 

 Wood heavy, hard, strong, tough, difficult to split, coarse-grained, light brown, with thick 

 somewhat lighter colored sapwood; largely used for the hubs of wheels, saddle-trees, in 

 flooring and cooperage, and in boat and shipbuilding. 



Distribution. River-bottom lands, intervales, low rich hills, and the banks of streams; 

 southern Newfoundland to the northern shores of Lake Superior and the headwaters of 

 the Saskatchewan, southward to the neighborhood of Lake Istokpoga, De Soto County, 

 Florida, westward in the United States to the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota, the 

 Black Hills of South Dakota, western Nebraska, central Kansas and Oklahoma, and the 

 valley of the upper Colorado River (Fort Chadbourne, Coke County), Texas; very com- 

 mon northward, less abundant and of smaller size southward; abundant on the banks of 

 streams flowing through the midcontinental plateau. 



Largely planted as an ornamental and shade tree in the northern states, and rarely in 

 western and northern Europe. 



