se rounded, truncate, acute, or
slightly and unevenly heart-shaped; leafstalk rather short, slender,
hairy; stipules pubescent, falling early.

=Inflorescence.=--May. Sterile flowers from growth of the preceding
season in short, stunted-looking, lateral catkins, mostly single; scales
ovate or rounded, obtuse, each subtending several stamens; filaments
very short, mostly 2-forked; anthers bearded at the tip: fertile flowers
at the ends of leafy shoots of the season, in loose catkins; bractlets
foliaceous, each subtending a green, ovate, acute, ciliate, deciduous
scale, each scale subtending two pistils with long reddish styles.

=Fruit.=--In terminal catkins made conspicuous by the pale green, much
enlarged, and leaf-like 3-lobed bracts, each bract subtending a
dark-colored, sessile, striate nutlet.

=Horticultural Value.=--Hardy throughout New England; prefers moist,
rich soil, near running water, on the edges of wet land or on rocky
slopes in shade. Its irregular outline and curiously ridged trunk make
it an interesting object in landscape plantations. It is not often used,
however, because it is seldom grown in nurseries, and collected plants
do not bear removal well. Propagated from the seed.

[Illustration: PLATE XXIX.--Carpinus Caroliniana.]

1. Winter buds.
2. Flowering branch.
3. Sterile flower, back view.
4. Sterile flower, front view.
5. Fertile catkin.
6. Fertile flower.
7. Fruiting branch.

=BETULA.=

Inflorescence.--In scaly catkins, sterile and fertile on the same tree,
appearing with or before the leaves from shoots of the previous
season,--sterile catkins terminal and lateral, formed in summer, erect
or inclined in the bud, drooping when expanded in the following spring;
sterile flowers usually 3, subtended by a shield-shaped bract with 2
bractlets; each flower consisting of a 1-scaled calyx and 2 anthers,
which appear to be 4 from the division of the filaments into two parts,
each of which bears an anther cell: fertile catkins erect or inclined at
the end of very short leafy branchlets; fertile flowers subtended by a
3-lobed bract falling with the nuts; bractlets none; calyx none; corolla
none; consisting of 2-3 ovaries crowned with 2 spreading styles.

=Betula lenta, L.=

BLACK BIRCH. CHERRY BIRCH. SWEET BIRCH.

=Habitat and Range.=--Moist grounds; rich woods, old pastures, fertile
hill-slopes, banks of rivers.

Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to the Lake Superior re