BETCLACE,£. 327 



Sandy soil, rare. M \y. A shrub 2 to 8 feet high, with a very branching top, 

 and grayish bark. Lc row \y 2 to 2% inches long by % to %. Aments sessile along 

 fchtj last yaws branches. The fruit consists of a globular nut or stone enclosing a 

 kernel, and covered with a coating of whitish wax. 



2, COMPTONIA, Solander. Sweet Fern. 



Ia.honor of Henry Compton, Bishop of London a century ago, a patron of botany. 



Monoecious. Sterile flowers in- cylindrical aments 

 with reniform-cordate pointed scale-like bracts, and 3 to 6' 

 stamens. Fertile flowers in globular aments, burr-like ; 

 ovary surrounded by 5 to 6 long linear-awl-shapcd scales, 

 persistent around the ovoid smooth nut; otherwise as in 

 Myrica. — Low shrubs, with long and narrow pinnatt'Jid-lobed 

 leaves with small stipules appearing after the flowers. 



01 ASPLENIFOLIA, Ait. Sweet Fern. 



Lena long linear-lanceolate,- alternately ainuate-pinnatifid. 



Dry woods and hills, common. May. A well known, handsome aromatic shrub, 

 1 to 2 feet high. Leaves numerous, on short peduncles, 3 to 4 inches long. % i U( - llL 

 •wide, divided nearly to the midvein into numerous rounded lobes. 



Order 105. BETULACEiE.— Birch Family.. 



Monoecious trees or shrub?, with sterile and fertile flowers in scaly aments. 2 or 3 

 un-''rea;k bract, and no involucre to tlienikel 1-ccUcd ani 1-seeded often wiriged 

 nut, which results from a 2-cdled and 2-ovulei ovary. Styles single or none : stig- 

 ma 2. 



f. BETULA, Tourn. Birch. 



The ancient Latin- name. 



Sterile flowers 3, with 2 bractlets under each- scale or 

 bract of the ament, consisting each of a perianth of 1 scale 

 and 4 stamens attached to its base : filaments short. Fer- 

 tile flowers 3 under each 3-lobed bract, consisting of a 

 naked ovary with 2 thread-like stigmas, becoming a broadly 

 winged and scale-like nutlet or small samara. Seed sus- 

 pended, anatropous. — Tree? and shrubs, mostly with the outer 

 hark usually separable in thin horizontal sheets, ovate, serrate alter- 

 nate leaves, and' monoecious flowers, the golden sterile ones expanding 

 in early spring preceding the leaves, the fertile in oblong cylindrical 

 aments appearing with the leaves. 



* Trees with thebark of the trunk white externally, separable in thin sheets. 



1. B. populifolia, Ait. White Birch, 



Leaves deltoid (triangular), long-acuminate, truncate or slightly cordate at base, 

 unequally serrate, smooth and shining on both sides, on smooth petioles : fertiU 

 aments on peduncles ; scales with roundish, lateral lobe3. . 



