456 CUPULIFER.E. (OAK FAMILY.) 



4. CORYLUS, Tourn. Hazel-nut. Filbert. 



Sterile flowers in drooping cylindrical catkins consisting of 8 (half-) stamens 

 with 1-celled anthers, their short filaments and pair of scaly bractlets cohering 

 more or less with the inner face of the bract or scale of the catkin. Fertile 

 flowers several in a scaly bud or ovoid catkin, each a single ovary in the axil of 

 a scale or bract, and accompanied by a pair of lateral bractlets ; the ovary 

 tipped with a short limb of the adherent calyx, incompletely 2-celled, with 2 

 pendulous ovules, one of them sterile : style short : stigmas 2, elongated and 

 slender. Nut ovoid or oblong, bony, each enclosed in a leafy or partly coria- 

 ceous cup or involucre, consisting of the two bractlets enlarged and often grown 

 together, lacerated at the border. Cotyledons very thick (but raised to the sur- 

 face of the soil in germination), edible; the short radicle included. — Shrubs or 

 small trees, with thinnish doubly-toothed leaves, folded lengthwise in the bud, 

 flowering in early spring : sterile catkins single or fascicled from scaly buds of 

 the axils of the preceding year, the fertile terminating early leafy shoots. (The 

 classical name, probably from nopvs, a helmet, from the involucre.) 



1. C. Americana, Walt. (Wild Hazel-nut.) Leaves roundish-heart- 

 shaped, pointed ; involucre open above down to the globose nut, of 2 broad foliaeeous 

 cut-toothed almost distinct bracts, their base coriaceous and downy, or with glandular 

 bristles intermixed. — Thickets : common. — Twigs and petioles often glandular- 

 bristly. Nut smaller and thicker-shelled than the European Hazel-nut. 



2. C. l'OStrata, Ait. (Beaked Hazel-nut.) leaves ovate or ovate-oblong, 

 somewhat heart-shaped, pointed ; involucre of united bracts, much prolonged above the 

 ovoid nut into a narrow tubular beak, densely bristly. — Common northward and 

 along the Alleghanies. — Shrub 2° -5° high, with slender and mostly smooth 

 branches. 



5 . OSTRYA, Micheli. Hop-Hornbeam. Iron-wood. 



Sterile flowers in drooping cylindrical catkins, consisting of several stamens 

 in the axil of each bract : filaments short, often forked, or irregularly united, 

 bearing 1-celled (half-) anthers; their tips hairy. Fertile flowers in short cat- 

 kins ; a pair under each deciduous bract, each of an incompletely 2-celled 2- 

 ovuled ovary, crowned with the short bearded border of the adherent calyx, 

 tipped with 2 long-linear stigmas, and enclosed in a tubular bractlet, which in 

 fruit becomes a closed bladdery oblong bag, very much larger than the small 

 and smooth nut ; these inflated involucres loosely imbricated to form a sort of 

 strobile, in appearance like that of the Hop. — Slender trees, with very hard 

 wood, brownish furrowed bark, and foliage resembling that of Birch': leaves 

 open and concave in the bud, more or less plaited on the straight veins. Flow- 

 ers in spring, appearing with the leaves ; the sterile catkins 1-3 together from 

 scaly buds at the tip of the branches of the preceding year ; the fertile single, 

 terminating short leafy shoots of the season. (The classical name.) 



1. O. Virgillica, Willd. (American Hop-Hornbeam. Lever-wood.) 

 Leaves oblong-ovate, taper-pointed, very sharply doubly serrate, downy beneath, 

 with 11 -15 principal veins; buds acute; involucral sacs bristly-hairy at the 

 base. — Rich woods: common. Hop-like fruit full grown in Aug. 



