2. Óstrya vulgàris, Willd. (European Hop-hornbeam.) This species from Europe is much like the American one, but has longer, more slender, more pendulous fruit-clusters. Occasionally cultivated.
Genus 87. CARPÌNUS.
Trees or tall shrubs with alternate, simple, straight-veined leaves, and smooth and close gray bark. Flowers in drooping catkins, the sterile flowers in dense cylindric ones, and the fertile flowers in a loose terminal one forming an elongated, leafy-bracted cluster with many, several-grooved, small nuts, hanging on the tree till late in the autumn.
C. Caroliniàna.
1. Carpìnus Caroliniàna, Walt. (American Hornbeam. Blue or Water Beech.) Leaves ovate-oblong, pointed, sharply doubly serrate, soon nearly smooth. Fruit with the scales obliquely halberd-shaped and cut-toothed, ¾ in. long, nuts 1/8 in. long. A tree or tall shrub, 10 to 25 ft. high, with a peculiarly ridged trunk; the close, smooth gray bark and the leaves are much like those of the Beech. The wood is very hard and whitish. Common along streams; sometimes cultivated.
C. Bétulus.
2. Carpìnus Bétulus, L. (European Hornbeam.) This cultivated species is quite similar to the American, but can be distinguished by the scales of the fruit, which are wholly halberd-shaped, having the basal lobes nearly equal in size, as shown in the cut; while the American species has scales only half halberd-shaped.
Genus 88. QUÉRCUS.