BIRCH FAMILY 



Petioles stout, yellow, covered with black glands, enlarged at base, 

 slightly grooved. Stipules ovate, acute, light green, caducous. 



Flowers. — April, monoecious, before the leaves. Staminate cat- 

 kins clustered or in pairs, when mature become three to four inches 

 long. Pistillate catkins one inch to one and a half inches long, 

 peduncles bibracteolate, three-fourths to one inch in length. Scales 

 lanceolate, pale green ; styles bright red. 



Fruit. — Strobiles, cylindrical, elongated, pendulous, long-stalked. 

 Scales glabrous, wedge-shaped at base, rather longer than broad, 

 with short, wide-spreading, rounded lobes. Nut oval, small, nar- 

 rower than its wings. 



Give me of your bark, O Birch-tree ! 

 Of your yellow bark, O Birch-tree ! 

 Growing by the rushing river 

 Tall and stately in the valley ! 

 I a light canoe will build me. 

 Build a swift Cheemaun for sailing, 

 That shall float upon the river, 

 Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, 

 Like a yellow water-lily ! 



— Henry W. Longfellow, 



The great triumph of the birch is the bark canoe. The design of a savage, 

 it y.et looks like the thought of a poet and its grace and fitness haunt the imagina- 

 tion. I suppose its production was the inevitable result of the Indians' wants 

 and surroundings, but that does not detract from its beauty. It is, indeed, one 

 of the fairest flowers the thorny plant of necessity ever bore. 



—John Burroughs. 



The Paper Birch possesses the most wonderful bark of any 

 of our native trees. In outward color it is a lustrous creamy 

 white, so brilliant that its gleam can be seen in the 

 forest as far as the eye can reach. Beneath the smooth 

 white skin are the paper-like layers which readily separate 

 into thin sheets and vary in color from cream to light tan. 

 This bark is the joy and pride of every woodsman whether 

 he be tourist, guide, or hunter. It makes his canoe, it roofs 

 his cabin, it becomes for the time his dinner-service, it is a 

 cup, a pail, a cloak, an umbrella. The thin papery layers 

 into which the bark separates are of so firm a texture that it 

 is possible both to write and paint upon them. Curious 

 traditions gather about this natural paper. Pliny and Plu- 

 tarchagree that the famous books of Numa Pompilius, written 



304 



