316 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



September on slender conspicuously jointed pedicels often ' long, in many-flowered gla- 

 brous racemes from l'-l|' in length; calyx 6-parted to the base, with oblong-obovate red- 

 brown divisions rounded at apex; ovary sessile, narrowed below, villose. Fruit ripening 

 early in November, stipitate, oblong-elliptic, deeply divided at apex, fringed on the mar- 

 gins with long silvery white hairs, about \' long. 



A tree, 50-60 high, with a trunk 2-3 in diameter, comparatively small spreading 

 or pendulous branches often forming a broad handsome head, and slender pendulous 

 branchlets glabrous or occasionally puberulous when they first appear, brown, lustrous, 

 and marked by occasional oblong white lenticels during their first year, becoming darker 



Fig. 287 



the following season and ultimately dark gray-brown, and often furnished with 2 or 3 

 thick corky wings developed during their second or third years. Winter-buds ovoid, 

 acute, \' long, their outer scales oblong-obovate, dark chestnut-brown, glabrous, the inner 

 often scarious on the margins, pale yellow-green, lustrous and sometimes f ' long when fully 

 grown. Bark \'-\' thick, light brown slightly tinged with red, and divided by shallow fis- 

 sures into broad flat ridges broken on the surface into large thin closely appressed scales. 

 Wood hard, close-grained, very strong and tough, light red-brown, with pale yellow sap- 

 wood. 



Distribution. Limestone hills and river banks; rare and local; eastern (near Pikeville, 

 Pike County) and southern Kentucky (Bowling Green, Warren County); banks of the 

 Cumberland River, near Clarksville and Nashville, Tennessee; northeastern Georgia (cliffs 

 of the Coosa River, near Rome, Floyd County); northern Alabama (Madison, Jefferson 

 and Tuscaloosa Counties); valley of the Arkansas River (near Van Buren, Crawford 

 County, G. M. Brown) and northwestern Arkansas (Sulphur Springs, Benton Courty, and 

 Boston Mountains near Jasper, Newton County, E. J. Palmer) ; eastern Oklahoma (near 

 Muskogee, Muskogee County, B. H. Slavin); southwestern (Grand Tower, Jackson 

 County, H. A.Gleasori) and southern Illinois (Richland County, R. Ridgway). 



Occasionally planted as a shade-tree in the streets of cities in northern Georgia and 

 northern Alabama; hardy in Eastern Massachusetts. 



2. PLANERA Gmel. 



A tree, with scaly puberulous branchlets roughened by scattered pale lenticels, and 

 at the end of their first season by small nearly orbicular leaf-scars marked by a row of 

 fibro-vascular bundle-scars, minute subglobose winter-buds covered by numerous thin 



