THE BIRCH FAAHLY. 1,9 



B. lent a, sweet black, or cherry birch, has in its youth a smooth bark 

 which, although it becomes quite rough with age, does not peel. The tree 

 in general appearance resembles an old cherry. It seems, however, to be 

 best known by its sweet, aromatic bark which is nibbled by country 

 children and from which is distilled birch oil. This substance, an important 

 article of commerce, is identical with the oil of wintergreen procured from the 

 little plant, Gaidtheria procumbens. Through the Roan Mountain country 

 the natives formerly made in the season, quite a little money with their birch 

 stills. 



THE BEECH FAMILY. 



Fagdcece. 



A large group of trees and shrubs with simple, alternate and petioled 

 leaves, their margins being entire or variously cut and lobed ; and which 

 bear monoecious flowers, the staminate ones forming avients and the 

 pistillate ones produced solitary, or a few together. Fruit : a nut, or 

 acorn. 



AMERICAN BEECH. {Plate XLL) 

 Fag us Americana. 



FAMILY SHAPE HEIGHT RANGE TIME OF BLOOM 



Beech. Rottnd-toJ>/<ed : ^o-^o-i^o/eei. Texas, Florida io Nova April, May, 



branches, horizontal. Scotia and westward. Septeiiiber, October. 



Bark: light bluish grey ; smooth. Leaves: with short petioles; ovate; with 

 pointed apex and rounded or narrowed base. Ribs : straight, unbranched and 

 terminating in the remote teeth ; fringed on the margins with soft, white hairs 

 which soon fall ; glabrous. Flotvers : appearing with the leaves. Staminate 

 ones : borne in globose heads clustered on drooping peduncles and subtentled by 

 linear, thin bracts. Pistillate ones : usually in pairs and terminating a scaly- 

 bracted peduncle. Fruit : a pair of three-sided nuts, with a sweet and edible 

 kernel, growing within a prickly bur which splits when ripe midway to the base. 



This great, solemn-looking tree is the only native species of the genus in 

 this country and from its earliest youth until old age is one of the most 

 beautiful. The peculiarity of its mottled bark and the clean-cut of its limbs 

 make it as noticeable in winter time as it is in summer when covered by 

 its crown of lustrous, deep green leaves. The seedlings show it in one of its 

 most interesting stages. Their small leaves, as is true of all the young ones, 

 are covered on their veins and under sides with a soft, silky white fuzz which 

 extends as a delicate fringe about their edges. Only as they reach maturity 



