198 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



a broad round-topped head, and branchlets at first green and covered with long pale 

 hairs, light orange-brown and pilose during their first summer, becoming glabrous 

 and light brown slightly tinged with orange, and ultimately dull and darker. Win- 

 ter-buds about \' long, somewhat viscid and covered with loose pale hairs during 

 the summer, becoming light chestnut-brown, acute, and slightly puberulous in winter. 

 Bark of young stems and of the branches bright silvery gray or light orange color, 

 very lustrous, separating into thin loose persistent scales more or less rolled on the 

 margins, becoming on old trees ' thick, reddish brown, and divided by narrow irregu- 

 lar fissures into large thin plates covered with minute closely appressed scales. Wood 



heavy, very strong, hard, close-grained, light brown tinged with red, with thin nearly 

 white sapwood ; largely used in the manufacture of furniture, button and tassel 

 moulds, boxes, the hubs of wheels, and for fuel. 



Distribution. Moist uplands, in rich soil, and one of the largest deciduous-leaved 

 trees of northeastern America; Newfoundland and along the northern shores of the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence to the valley of Rainy River, and southward to northern Dela- 

 ware and northern Minnesota, and along the Alleghany Mountains to the high peaks 

 of North Carolina and Tennessee; very abundant and of its largest size in the east- 

 ern provinces of Canada and in northern New York and New England ; small and 

 rare in southern New England and southward. 



2. Strobiles oblong or cylindrical wing broader than the nut; leaves with 5-9 pairs 

 of veins. 

 *Strobiles oblong, erect, ripening in May or June. 



3. Betula nigra, L. Red Birch. River Birch. 



Leaves rhombic-ovate, acute, abruptly or gradually narrowed and wedge-shaped 

 at the base, doubly serrate, on vigorous young branches often more or less laciniately 

 cut into acute doubly serrate lobes, when they unfold light yellow-green and pilose 

 above and coated below, especially on the midribs and petioles, with thick white 

 tomentum, at maturity thin and tough, l^'-3' long, l'-2' wide, deep green and 

 lustrous above, glabrescent, pubescent, or ultimately glabrous below, except on the 

 stout midribs and remote primary veins, turning dull yellow in the autumn ; their 



