Manual of the Trees of North America (Exclusive of Mexico) 2nd ed.Sargent, Charles Sprague
Science
Manual of the Trees of North America (Exclusive of Mexico) 2nd ed.
Sargent, Charles Sprague
Trees -- North America
A tree 20°—30° high, with a trunk 12′—18′ in diameter, usually divided
1° or 2° above the ground into 3 or 4 stout upright stems 4′—5′ thick,
slender pendulous often much contorted branches forming a narrow
round-topped symmetrical head, and slender branchlets dark green and
coated with hoary tomentum when they first appear, dark red-brown and
pubescent during their first summer, becoming light cinnamon-brown,
glabrous, and lustrous in the winter, and ultimately ashy gray.
Winter-buds ovoid, dark brownish red, about ⅛′ long. Bark internally
bright orange color, ⅛′ thick, separating into loose hanging plate-like
scales light gray slightly tinged with red, and 1′—2′ long and wide.
Wood light reddish brown, with thin sapwood.
Distribution. On the southern slope of the cañon of the Colorado River
in Coconino County, Arizona, at altitudes of 6000°—7000° above the sea
(Hance trail, seventy miles north of Flagstaff); in the cañon of Oak
Creek, south of Flagstaff (_P. Lowell_); and on Grand River, Utah (Moab,
Grant County, _M. E. Jones_).
3. BETULA L. Birch.
Trees, with smooth resinous bark marked by long longitudinal lenticels,
often separating freely into thin papery plates, becoming thick, deeply
furrowed, and scaly at the base of old trunks, short slender branches
more or less erect and forming on young trees a narrow symmetrical
pyramidal head, becoming horizontal and often pendulous on older trees,
tough branchlets, short stout spur-like 2-leaved lateral branchlets much
roughened by the crowded leaf-scars of many years, and elongated
winter-buds covered by numerous ovate acute scales, and fully grown and
bright green at midsummer. Leaves open and convex in the bud, often
incisely lobed; stipules ovate and acute or oblong-obovate, scarious.
Flowers in 3-flowered cymes, the lateral flowers of the cyme subtended
by bractlets adnate to the base of the scale of the ament; staminate
aments long, pendulous, solitary or clustered, appearing in summer or
autumn in the axils of the last leaves of a branchlet or near the ends
of short lateral branchlets, erect and naked during the winter, their
scales in the spring broadly ovate, rounded, short-stalked, yellow or
orange-color below the middle and dark chestnut-brown and lustrous above
it; staminate flowers composed of a membranaceous 4-lobed calyx often
2-lobed by suppression, the anterior lobe obovate, rounded at apex, as
long as the stamens, much longer than the minute posterior lobe, and of
2 stamens inserted on the base of the calyx, with short 2-branched
filaments, each branch bearing an erect half-anther; pistillate aments
oblong or cylindric, terminal on the short spur-like lateral branchlets,
their scales closely imbricated, oblong-ovate, 3-lobed, light yellow,
often tinged with red above the middle, accrescent, becoming brown and
woody at maturity, and forming sessile or stalked erect or pendulous
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