204 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
The black birch is the most beautiful, and, for the useful 
properties of its wood, the most valuable of its family. 
Early in spring it expands its long aments, which hang like 
tassels of purple and gold, and continue for many days shedding 
beauty and fragrance, at a time when few other objects feel the 
kindly influences of the season; and it is amongst the first trees 
to put forth its leaves. In the forest, in the nich, cool, moist 
souls which it prefers, on mountain sides, or the banks of streams, 
it often attains the height of sixty or seventy feet. On an open 
plain, growing by itself, it is a round-headed tree, and from the 
length and slenderness of its somewhat tortuous branches, they 
become pendulous, forming the most graceful of the weeping 
trees. It is found in every county, but flourishes most in the 
mountainous districts. The light, winged seed often lodges and 
vegetates in crannies of almost inaccessible rocks, and thence 
pushes down its roots, over the bare rock, to a considerable dis- 
tance, in search of a foothold in the soil. I[t is often, too, seen 
srowing from the top of the mass of soil and stones adhering to 
the roots of an old, overturned tree. 
The trunk in small trees is covered with a smooth, dark pur- 
ple bark, entire, or, in larger trees, with distant chinks. On 
very old trunks, it is broken into horizontal, straight-edged 
plates, which become loose at the end, and scale off in broad 
sheets. The spray is very slender, of a reddish bronze color, 
gradually deepening to a very dark polished bronze, almost 
black, dotted with conspicuous gray dots. The buds are coni- 
cal and pointed. ‘I'he leaves are two or three inches long, and 
one, or one and a half wide, oblong-ovate, heart-shaped at base, 
tapering to a point, finely and sharply but irregularly serrate, 
smooth and somewhat impressed on the veins above, paler, and 
with the veins straight and prominent, and hairy beneath, the 
under surface dotted with numerous resinous, but not viscid dots. 
They are on short curved footstalks sometimes a httle hairy. 
On the lower parts of the branches, they are in twos, towards the 
elds, alternate. In autumn, they assume various shades of 
ochreous yellow, or pale orange, or an extremely delicate yel- 
low, lighter than orange, nearly a lemon color. 
The male flowers are on cylindrical, pendulous catkins, from 
