A tree, with aromatic bark and leaves, 70°—80° high, with a trunk 2°—5° in diameter, slender branches spreading almost at right angles, becoming pendulous toward the ends and gradually forming a narrow round-topped open graceful head, and branchlets light green, slightly viscid and pilose when they first appear, soon turning dark orange-brown, lustrous during the summer, bright red-brown in their first winter, becoming darker and finally dark dull brown slightly tinged with red. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, about ¼′ long, with ovate acute light chestnut-brown loosely imbricated scales, those of the inner ranks becoming ½′—¾′ long. Bark on young stems and branches close, smooth, lustrous, dark brown tinged with red, and marked by elongated horizontal pale lenticels, becoming on old trunks ½′—¾′ thick, dull, deeply furrowed and broken into large thick irregular plates covered with closely appressed scales. Wood heavy, very strong and hard, close-grained, dark brown tinged with red, with thin light brown or yellow sapwood of 70—80 layers of annual growth; largely used for floors, in the manufacture of furniture and for fuel, and occasionally in ship and boat-building. Sweet birch-oil distilled from the wood and bark is used for medicinal purposes and for flavoring as a substitute for oil of wintergreen, and beer is obtained by fermenting the sugary sap. Distribution. Rich uplands from southern Maine to northwestern Vermont, and eastern Ohio and southward to northern Delaware and along the Appalachian Mountains up to altitudes of 4000° to northern Georgia; in Alabama, and in eastern Kentucky and Tennessee; a common forest tree at the north, and of its largest size on the western slopes of the southern Alleghany Mountains. × _Betula Jackii_ Schn., a natural hybrid of _B. lenta_ with _B. pumila_ Michx., has appeared in the Arnold Arboretum. 2. Betula lutea Michx. Yellow Birch. Gray Birch. [Illustration: Fig. 195]