BETUL AGILE 191 



margins, bright red below, light yellow-green at the apex, J'long. Flowers: stam- 

 inate aments 1^' long when fully grown, with broadly ovate acute boat-shaped 

 scales green below the middle, bright red above; pistillate aments '-f' long, with 

 ovate acute hairy green scales; styles scarlet. Fruit: nuts ' long, their involucres 



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

 usually on one margin only of the middle lobe, !'-!' long, nearly 1' wide, on slender 

 terete pubescent red-brown stems 5'-6' long. 



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 branchlets 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 the first winter and ultimately dull gray tinged with red. Winter- 

 buds ovate 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~V 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; 

 southern and western Quebec to the northern shores of Georgian Bay, southward 

 to Cape Malabar and the shores of Tampa Bay, Florida, and westward to northern 

 Minnesota, eastern Nebraska and Kansas, the Indian Territory, 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 

 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; their petioles slender, nearly terete, hairy; stipules strap-shaped to oblong- 

 obovate. Flowers: staminate in long clustered sessile or short-stalked aments de- 



