A tree, usually 40°—50°, occasionally 90° high, with a trunk sometimes 3° in diameter, slender somewhat pendulous branches forming a narrow pyramidal head, and slender branchlets marked by minute scattered pale lenticels, light green and coated at first with hoary tomentum sometimes persistent until their second year, becoming during the first winter bright red and lustrous and ultimately ashy gray. Winter-buds about ⅓′ long, dark red, covered with pale scurfy pubescence. Bark rarely more than ¾′ thick, close, roughened by minute wart-like excrescences, pale gray or nearly white, with a thin outer layer, and bright red-brown inner bark. Wood light, soft, brittle, not strong, close-grained, light brown tinged with red, with thick nearly white sapwood; in Washington and Oregon largely used in the manufacture of furniture and for smoking salmon; by the Indians of Alaska the trunks are hollowed into canoes. Distribution. Shores of Yakutat Bay, southeastern Alaska, southward near the coast to the cañons of the Santa Inez Mountains, Santa Barbara County, California; common along the banks of streams, and of its largest size near the shores of Puget Sound; in California most abundant in Mendocino, Humboldt and Marin Counties, forming groves on bottom-lands near the coast; often ranging inland for 20 or 30 miles, and occasionally ascending to altitudes of 2000° above the sea. 3. Alnus tenuifolia Nutt. Alder. [Illustration: Fig. 211] Leaves ovate-oblong, acute or acuminate, broad and rounded or cordate or occasionally abruptly narrowed and cuneate at base, usually acutely laciniately lobed and doubly serrate, when they unfold light green often tinged with red, pilose on the upper surface and coated on the lower with pale tomentum, at maturity thin and firm, dark green and glabrous above, pale yellow-green and glabrous or puberulous below, 2′—4′ long, 1½′—2½′ wide, with a stout orange-colored midrib impressed on the upper side, and slender primary veins running to the points of the lobes; petioles stout, slightly grooved, orange-colored, ½′—1′ in length; stipules ovate, acute, thin, and scarious, ½′ long, about ⅛′ wide, covered with pale pubescence. Flowers: staminate aments 3 or 4 in number in slender-stemmed racemes, nearly sessile or raised on stout peduncles often ½′ long, during the winter light purple, ¾′—1′ long and ¼′ thick, becoming 1½′—2′ in length; calyx-lobes rounded, shorter than the 4 stamens; pistillate aments naked during the winter, dark red-brown, nearly ¼′ long, with acute apiculate loosely imbricated scales, only slightly enlarged when the flowers open. Fruit: strobiles obovoid-oblong, ⅓′—½′ long, their scales much thickened, truncate and 3-lobed at apex; nut nearly circular to slightly obovoid, surrounded by a thin membranaceous border.