ins erect or
suberect, sessile or nearly so, 1/2-1 inch long, oblong-cylindrical;
bracts pubescent; lateral lobes wider than in _B. lutea._

=Fruit.=--Fruiting catkins oblong-cylindrical, nearly erect; bracts with
3 short, nearly equal diverging lobes: nut obovate-oblong, wider than
its wings; upper part of seed-body usually appressed-pubescent.

=Horticultural Value.=--Hardy throughout New England; grows everywhere
from swamps to hilltops, but prefers moist rocky slopes and a loamy or
gravelly soil; occasionally offered by nurserymen; both nursery and
collected plants are moved without serious difficulty; apt to grow
rather unevenly.

[Illustration: PLATE XXX.--Betula lenta.]

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

=Betula lutea, Michx. f.=

YELLOW BIRCH. GRAY BIRCH.

=Habitat and Range.=--Low, rich woodlands, mountain slopes.

Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to Rainy river.

New England,--abundant northward; common throughout, from borders of
lowland swamps to 1000 feet above the sea level; more common at
considerable altitudes, where it often occurs in extensive patches or
belts.

South to the middle states, and along the mountains to Tennessee
and North Carolina; west to Minnesota.

=Habit.=--A large tree, at its maximum in northern New England 60-90
feet high and 2-4 feet in diameter at the base. In the forest the main
trunk separates at a considerable height into a few large branches which
rise at a sharp angle, curving slightly, forming a rather small,
irregular head, widest near the top; while in open ground the head is
broad-spreading, hemispherical, with numerous rather equal, long and
slender branches, and a fine spray with drooping tendencies. In the
sunlight the silvery-yellow feathering and the metallic sheen of trunk
and branches make the yellow birch one of the most attractive trees of
the New England forest.

=Bark.=--Bark of trunks and large limbs in old trees gray or blackish,
lustreless, deep-seamed, split into thick plates, standing out at all
sorts of angles; in trees 6-8 inches in diameter, scarf-bark lustrous,
parted in ribbon-like strips, detached at one end and running up the
trunk in delicate, tattered fringes; season's shoots light
yellowish-green, minutely buff-dotted, woolly-pubescent, becoming in
successive seasons d