208 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
At Lanesboro’, I measured, in 1838, a yellow birch, of ten 
feet seven inches girth at the ground. 
Sp. 3. Tue Rep Bircs. B. nigra. Aiton. 
Figured in Michaux, Sylva, IT, Plate 72. 
This tree is somewhat different in aspect and character from 
the other birches. It is usually found bending over a stream 
with its roots always in the water, or growing, in company with 
the swamp white oak and red maple, in places which, during one 
half the year, are inundated. In such situations, it is rarely 
erect, but commonly bends towards the water. When erect and 
standing alone, it is a singularly graceful tree, with its upper 
limbs long and sweeping out like those of an elm, and its trunk 
almost clothed with small, leafy, pendulous branches. Usually, 
it is remarkable for throwing out many small branches near 
the ground, and for the denseness and multitude of its branches 
above. The stem, in trees thirty feet high, is covered with 
a reddish-white bark more loose and torn than that of any 
other tree. The external bark, wanting the great tenacity of 
the white and canoe birches, separates, in flakes an inch or two 
broad, adhering by one end, while the other projects like an 
ample fringe. The color of this loose bark, when seen by 
transmitted light, as we see it from the ground, is a light red; 
when seen by reflected light it is a reddish brown or chocolate 
color. The trunk on old trees is dark gray, very rough, with 
little resemblance to that of any other birch except the black, 
and very much like the black cherry, but not so dark. 
The recent shoots are brown and downy; those of a year or 
more are black, dotted with light gray. 'The branches are very 
numerous, small, dependent, with bark on the larger ones 
brownish or whitish red, and excessively ragged. Leaves heater- 
shaped, or rhombic, the larger ones three or three anda half 
inches long, and two or two and a half wide, uniformly acute at 
the base and at the extremity, conspicuously doubly serrate, 
bright green above, glaucous beneath. The leaf-stalks are short, 
and, with the leaf, downy when recently expanded. The bark 
Within is of an ochrey orange red; the wood, white and hard. 
