THE HORNBEAM. 
3t 
maker. The leaves, which have short stalks, and are from two 
to four inches long, are roundish with a wedge-shaped base. 
They have a waved and toothed margin, and remain green 
long after the leaves of other trees have fallen. In their young 
condition these leaves are covered with hairs, and are sticky to 
the touch, and it is to this fact that the name glutinosa has 
reference. 
The flowering of the Alder is very similar to that of the Birch, 
but the male catkins have red scales, and each flower four stamens. 
The female spikes have the fleshy scales covered by red-brown 
bracts of a woody consistence, which persist after the fruit has 
dropped out of them. Seed is not produced until the Alder is 
twenty years old, and the crop is repeated almost every year 
after. The cones are ripe about October or November, when 
they scatter their fruit, but the empty ones persist in hanging to 
the branches throughout the winter in numbers sufficient to give 
the leafless tree a brown appearance from a little distance. The 
immature male catkins are in evidence at the same time. 
There is a variety {incisa) of the Alder in which the leaves are 
so deeply toothed that they bear a close resemblance to those 
of the Hawthorn. 
In some localities the tree is called the Howler and Aller, the 
latter word apparently the original name, for its Anglo-Saxon 
forms were air, air, and aler. 
The Hornbeam {Carpinus betulus). 
The Hornbeam is frequently passed by as a Beech, to which 
it has a very close superficial likeness, but a comparison of leaves, 
flowers, or bole would at once make the differences obvious. It 
is usually found in similar situations to the Beech, though it 
does not ascend so far up the hills as that species. On dry, poor 
soils it does not attain its full proportions and may only be classed 
as a small tree ; but when growing on low ground, in rich loam 
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