FOREST TREES. 



115 



Carpinns Americana of Michx. ; or C. caroliniana of Walt. — 



Leaves ovate-oblong, pointed, doubly serrate, very smooth and 

 thin, resembling those of the Common Beech (Fagus), Sterile 

 flowers in rather dense catkins, and fertile ones in little 

 slender, loose catkins, with a pair of three-lobed bractlets, one 

 on each side of the small nut-like seed, which ripens late in the 

 autumn. Shrubs and trees, from twenty to forty feet high, 

 often a number of stems springing from the same root. Com- 

 mon in swamps, and along the banks of streams from Nova 

 Scotia, westward through the Canadas and Northern States, 

 and southward along the AUeglianies to Georgia, and in the 

 rich woods of Florida. Bark smooth and of a grayish color, 

 stem often deeply furrowed. Wood very white, hard, close- 

 grained and exceedingly tough. Extensively used by the early 

 settlers of our Northern States for making brooms, as the wood 

 is so tough that it is easily divided into very thin and narrow 

 strips for the brush of the home-made broom. A blue-beech 

 withe will last almost as long as iron wire, and an ox-gad made 

 of a blue-beech sprout is nearly equal to a leather one. There 

 may be many of my readers who have seen an armful of the 

 same kind of implements of torture, brought into the country 

 school-house and placed near the fire or drawn through the hot 

 ashes on the hearth, to take the frost out and increase their 

 flexibility and toughness of the rods, which were once con- 

 sidered very important aids in preserving the discipline of a 

 district school. There is one European and an oriental species 

 of Carpinus, but neither are of any special value as timber 

 trees. For another tree closely allied to the Carpinns botanic- 

 ally, but otherwise very distinct, see Ostrya Virginica, 



c AR YA . — Hickory, 



The hickories are a very important genus of North American 

 trees, supplying almost every branch of mechanics with very 

 tough timber, and for fuel it has no superior. They are princi- 

 pally trees of large size, with alternate, odd-pinnate leaves, 

 which usually assume a golden hue in autumn. The flowers 

 are monoecious, the fertile ones very minute, opening at the 

 apex of the embryo nut, and the sterile or male ones in long, 

 pendulous catkins. Seed, a nut enclosed in a thick or thin, 

 four-valved epicarp or husk. All are readily propagated from 

 the nuts, which should be stripped from their outer husk soon 

 after they fall, and then buried in heaps, mixed with sand or 



