BIRCH FAMILY 



preme moment is brief; for a day or two they are the 

 perfection of grace and beauty, then the axis weakens 

 and becomes lax ; they cast their pollen to the winds 

 and pass away. 



GREEN OR MOUNTAIN ALDER 



Alnus alnobetiila. Aluiis viridis. 



A shrub of northern habitat, ranging from New- 

 foundland to Alaska, southward to Michigan and New 

 York, and down to the Carolinas along the Alleghany 

 mountains. It attains a height of sixleet; the young 

 foliage is glutinous and more or less pubescent. 



The leaves are broadly oval or ovate, two to five 

 inches long, minutely incised-serrulate, rounded or 

 slightly heart-shaped at base, acute or obtuse at apex. 

 When mature dark green and glabrous above, paler 

 and pubescent on the veins beneath. The next year's 

 buds are found well grown in the axils of the leaves in 

 July, are three-eighths of an inch long, reddish, slender, 

 pointed, — quite a marked summer character of the bush. 



For an alder it is a late bloomer, the catkins expand- 

 ing with the leaves. The staminate are very large and 

 handsome and quite abundant. Like all our alders the 

 sterile catkins are exposed during the winter; but the 

 small fertile ones are protected within large brown 

 buds, thus differing from the two better known species, 

 which have all the catkins exposed during the winter. 

 The fruiting cones are one-half to five-eighths of an 

 inch long ; the nut is winged. The bush gives the im- 

 pression of lush, strong growth ; possibly it is no 

 greener than its neighbors. 



468 



