BIRCH FAMILY 
The staminate Hower 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 in which is contained the fruit or seed. 
—GERALD. 
The Horne 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 bolles 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 
i . . 
often shows the same peculiarity but 
iv rarely so marked as the hornbeam. 
A Pistillate and a Staminate The branches are long, irregular, 
Ament of Hornbeam, 
Carpinus caroliniana. 
crooked and often pendulous, Some- 
times a broad flat-topped head o 
foliage is formed, sometimes only a shapeless mass. The 
branches are so tough and the tree so tolerant of the 
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