BIRCH FAMILY 



The staniinate flower is composed of three to twenty stamens crowded 

 on a hairy torus, adnate to the base of a broadly ovate, acute, boat- 

 shaped scale, green below the middle, bright red at apex. The pis- 

 tillate aments are one-half to three-fourths of an inch long with 

 ovate, acute, hairy, green scales and bright scarlet styles. 



Fruit. — Clusters of involucres, hanging from the ends of leafy 

 branches. Each involucre slightly incloses a small oval nut. The 

 involucres are short stalked, usually three-lobed, though one lobe 

 is often wanting ; halberd-shaped, coarsely serrate on one margin, 

 or entire. 



In time it waxeth so hard that the toughness and hardness of it may be rather 

 compared to horn than unto wood ; and therefore it was called hornebeam or 

 hard-beam. The leaves of it are like the elme, saving that they be tenderer ; 

 among these hang certain triangular things, upon which are found knaps or lit- 

 tle buds m which is contained the fruit or seed. 



^Gerald. 



The Home bound tree is a tough kind of wood that requires so much paines 

 in riving as is almost incredible, being the best for to make boUes and dishes, not 

 being subject to cracke or leake. 



— New England's Prospect. 



This is a tree of temperate climates 

 enjoying neither extreme heat nor ex- 

 treme cold. In texture, its bark re- 

 sembles that of the beech, is dark 

 bluish gray instead of light gray and 

 for this reason is called Blue Beech. 

 It is credited in the books with forty 

 feet of height but rarely attains more 

 than twenty. A peculiarity of its 

 growth is the manner in which the 

 sinews of the branches seem to run 

 down the trunk as if the tree con- 

 struction were Gothic. The beech 

 often shows the same peculiarity but 

 rarely so marked as the hornbeam. 



The branches are long, irregular, 

 crooked and often pendulous. Some- 

 times a broad flat-topped head of 

 foliage is formed, sometimes only a shapeless mass. The 

 branches are so tough and the tree so tolerant of the 



320 



A Pistillate and a Staminate 

 Ament of Hornbeam, 

 Carpinus carotiniana. 



