; Carpinus 533 
In winter, the twigs are smooth, shining, glabrous, with five-angled pith, and 
are marked at the base of the year’s growth by ringlike scars, due to the fall of the 
accrescent scales of the bud of the previous season. Terminal bud not formed, the 
tip of the branchlet falling off in summer and leaving a small circular scar close to 
the uppermost axillary bud, the latter prolonging the shoot in the following season. 
Leaf-scars small, crescentic, three-dotted, with a short stipular scar on each side. 
Buds, distichous on the branchlets, unequal in size, on prominent leaf-cushions, 
appressed against the stem, fusiform, 4 to $ inch long; scales, ciliate and pubescent 
towards the tips, brownish. 
Seedling :' Primary root tapering, wiry, flexuose; caulicle terete, pubescent, 
% inch long; cotyledons fleshy, rounded-obovate, 4 inch long, auricled at the base, 
shortly stalked, glabrous, green above, whitish beneath; stem zigzag, pubescent, 
giving off alternate stalked bi-serrate leaves, which resemble those of the adult 
plant, but are smaller and occasionally lobulate in margin. 
VARIETIES 
The common hornbeam shows little variation in the wild state, the only form 
worth noticing being var. carpinzzza, which is found in Transylvania. In this variety 
the leaves are often distinctly cordate at the base with only seven to nine pairs of 
nerves ; and the fruit-involucre has very short lateral lobes. 
Under cultivation, pyramidal,’ fastigiate, pendulous, and variegated forms have 
originated. In var. purpurea, the young leaves have a reddish tint. Var. zzczsa, 
Aiton,’ has leaves with large sharp serrated teeth. A wide-branching tree of this 
variety at Beauport, Sussex, is 6 feet 3 inches in girth; and there is also a fine 
specimen at Smeaton-Hepburn, East Lothian. In var. guerctfolza, Desfontaines,* 
the leaves are smaller than in the type and are irregularly and deeply cut or lobed. 
In this variety, leaves of the ordinary form are often present on the same branch with 
those of the pinnatifid kind. Two remarkable trees of this variety are reported® to 
be growing on the bowling green of the Woodrow Inn, in Cawston Parish, near 
Aylsham, Norfolk. 
DISTRIBUTION 
The common hornbeam is indigenous in the south of England; but its true 
native limits cannot now be exactly determined, It is recorded® from Somerset, 
Wilts, Dorset, Hants, Berks, Oxford, Bucks, Herts, Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Essex, 
Cambridge, Suffolk, and Norfolk ; but in many cases, especially in the south-western 
counties, the records are probably of planted and not really wild trees. In Dorset,’ 
it is a very rare tree; and Townsend * considers it to be a doubtful native of Hamp- 
shire. Druce® considers it to be indigenous in Oxfordshire on the chalk, but always 
1 Cf, Lubbock, Seedlings, ii. 532, f. 667 (1892). 
2 A solitary wild specimen of the pyramidal hornbeam formerly grew in the forest of Gremsey, near Vicin France. Godron, 
Les Hétres Tortillards (1869). 3 Aiton, Hort, Kew, iii. 362 (1789). 
4 Desfontaines, Zad. Ecol, Bot. Mus. Hist. Nat. 212 (1824). 5 Rev. J. F. Noott in letter to Kew, March 1894. 
6 Watson, Comp. Cybele Brit. 311 (1870) and Topog. Bot. 355 (1873). 
7 Mansell-Pleydell, Alora of Dorsetshire, 246 (1895). 
8 Flora of Hampshire, 313 (1883). ® Flora of Oxfordshire, 268 (1886). 
