The Hornbeams 



2, Ghnus Carpinus, Linn. 



American Hornbeam, Blue Beech {Carpinus Carolini- 

 ana, Walt.) — Small, shapeless tree with irregular limbs, often 

 pendulous, and slender, wiry twigs. Bark furrowed at base of 

 trunk on old trees; smooth, bluish grey above, swollen as by 

 veins underneath the bark; twigs brown. IVood light brown, 

 heavy, hard, strong, fine, hard to work. Buds all lateral, ovate, 

 small, brown. Leaves ovate-oblong, long pointed, irregularly 

 doubly serrate, often unequal at base, dull green, pale beneath, 

 orange or scarlet in autumn; hairy petiole and veins. Flowers 

 monoecious, with leaves, in April; staminate catkins, \\ inches 

 long, pendulous, lateral; pistillate flowers in racemes, terminal, 

 loose flowered, with forked red stigmas under green scales. 

 Fruit racemed, hard nutlets in pairs, each supported by a large, 

 leaf-like, 3-lobed bract. Preferred habitat, swampy rich soil near 

 streams, in shade of taller trees. Distribution, Georgian Bay 

 (southern Canada) to Florida; west to Minnesota and Texas; 

 also in Mexico and Central America. Uses: Curious and inter- 

 esting tree for planting along watercourses, but rarely seen in 

 landscape gardening. Wood used for tool handles, levers and ox 

 yokes. 



The American hornbeam has no "hop" in its name because 

 its fruit has none. Each little seed in the terminal cluster has a 

 mate on the other side of the stem, and all summer they have 

 grown close together, back to back, generally crowding for more 

 room. Each seed sits in the prow of a little boat, shaped like 

 a red maple leaf, but hollowed like a scallop shell. The wind 

 finally loosens the hold of each, and for a time seed and 

 boat hang by a thread. This breaks at last, and the little 

 nut sails off at the will of the wind, to grow, if it falls in 

 wet ground. 



This hornbeam resembles Ostrya in many particulars — its 

 leaves, its flowers, its delicate wiry twigs, its foliage, and the hard- 

 ness of its wood. It grows, too, in the shadows of other trees. The 

 bark it is that sets the trees apart. This tree has bark like a 

 young beech, a thin, smooth, blue-grey rind, that has strange 

 flutings or vein-like swellings coursing up the trunk and out on the 

 larger limbs. They remind one of the veins of a blacksmith's 

 sinewy arm, or an athlete's. A trunk a foot in diameter at the 



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