2950 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
dark granite gray, moderately rugged bark. ‘The branches, 
when the tree grows on high and rather dry land, are small, 
horizontal or arching upwards, with the bark more broken than 
on other poplars, and having a speckled appearance. ‘The 
branchlets are spreading and pendulous, greenish gray, and soon 
roughened by transverse cracks. ‘They are slightly angular to- 
wards the extremity. The recent shoots are very tough, green- 
ish, or greenish gray, and very slightly angled by ridges running 
down from the leaves. Buds of a moderate size, shining, but 
with very little balsam. Leafstalk long, somewhat compressed, 
with the upper edge sharp or roundish, with conspicuous glands 
above, at the base of theleaf. Leaves broad ovate, nearly as wide 
as they are long, rounded or making nearly a right angle with 
the stalk at base, tapering rapidly to a short pomt, with large 
rounded serratures ending in‘a callous or glandular point, looking 
towards the end of the leaf; green andsmooth on both surfaces, 
somewhat paler beneath. Pith in the small twigs very large 
and five-angled. 
The wood is white, soft, close-grained, resilient, not disposed 
to splinter, and resembling apparently, in its other propertics, 
that of the other poplars. 
This is usually a slender, rather handsome tree, with a spiry, 
but somewhat open head. 
It is found, cultivated, on the Connecticut River. In 1837, 
I found a large tree, growing naturally by the side of a 
stream in New Ashford, the leaves of which agree perfectly 
with those which I gathered in Middletown, from trecs which 
Dr. Barratt pronounces to be the necklace poplar. 
The resemblance between the leaves, branches and trunk of 
this tree, and those of the river poplar is such, that I should 
take them to be varieties of the same species. Dr. Barratt con- 
siders them as sufficiently distinguished by thcir fructification. 
In other respects I can see no marked diflerence, except in the 
smallness, and in the paleness of the under surface, of the leaves 
of the necklace poplar. 
The tree in New Ashford, of which I have spoken, was sup- 
posed by the inhabitants to be a Balm of Gilead. It grows by 
the side of asmall river, ina rich intervale, and measured, in 
