BIRCH FAMILY 



Flowers. — March, April, before the leaves. Monoecious. 

 Staminate aments are slender, cylindrical, formed in the previous 

 autumn and hang in stiff and terminal clusters of three, four or 

 five together on short, leafless branches or peduncles ; when ma- 

 ture they become two or three inches long. They then consist 

 of a central axis bearing brown or purple scales on short stalks ; 

 beneath each scale are three similar ones, each containing a 

 three to five-lobed calyx-cup, with three to five stamens from 

 whose anthers issues a cloud of pollen. The pistillate aments 

 are also formed during the previous autumn ; are one-fourth to 

 three-eighths of an inch long, clustered usually in threes; when 

 mature they become deep purple, bristling with scarlet styles. 

 The position of these pistillate aments is a distinguishing charac- 

 ter of the plant ; they look upward. 



Fruit. — Strobile of woody scales grown together, composed of 

 the pistillate ament enlarged and hardened. Its scales have be- 

 come woody and each protects a wingless seed-vessel which is 

 one-celled and one-seeded. October. 



The Speckled Aider is easily distinguished by the brilliant, polished, 

 reddish green color of its stem-bark, and the size, regularity, impressed 

 reticulations and the downy under-surface of the leaves. The branchlets, at 

 the time of flowering, are dependent, and the long, pendulous, sterile cat- 

 kins are thus terminal, while the ovate fertile ones are on shorter, lateral 

 foot-stalks just above. This is the reverse of the arrangement of the catkins 

 in the Common Alder in which the fertile aments, being erect, seem termi- 

 nal, while the sterile ones bend down. The flowers of the alder are among 

 the earliest harbingers of spring. 



— George H. Emerson. 



The earliest familiar token of the coming season is the expansion of the 

 stiff catkins of the alder into soft drooping tresses. These are so sensitive, 

 that if you pluck them at almost any time during the winter, a few days' 

 sunshine will make them open in a vase of water, and thus they eagerly 

 yield to every moment of April warmth. The blossom of the birch is more 

 delicate, that of the willow more showy, but the alders come first. They 

 cluster and dance everywhere upon the bare bough above the watercourses ; 

 the blackness of the buds is softened into rich brown and yellow, and as 

 this graceful creature thus comes waving into the spring, it is pleasant to 

 remember that the Norse Eddas fabled the first woman to have been named 

 Embla, because she was created from an alder-bough. 



— Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 

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