Sterile flowers in drooping cylindrical catkins, consisting of 8 (half-) stamens with 1-celled anthers, their short filaments and pair of scaly bractlets cohering more or less with the inner face of the scale of the catkin. Fertile flowers several in a scaly bud, each a single ovary in the axil of a scale or bract, and accompanied by a pair of lateral bractlets; ovary tipped with a short limb of the adherent calyx, incompletely 2-celled, with 2 pendulous ovules, one of them sterile; style short; stigmas 2, elongated and slender. Nut ovoid or oblong, bony, enclosed in a leafy or partly coriaceous cup or involucre, consisting of the two bractlets enlarged and often grown together, lacerated at the border. Cotyledons very thick (raised to the surface in germination), edible; the short radicle included.—Shrubs or small trees, with thinnish doubly-toothed leaves, folded lengthwise in the bud, flowering in early spring; sterile catkins single or fascicled from scaly buds of the axils of the preceding year, the fertile terminating early leafy shoots. (The classical name, probably from κόρυς, a helmet, from the involucre.)
1. C. Americàna, Walt. (Wild Hazel-nut.) Leaves roundish-heart-shaped, pointed; involucre open above down to the globose nut, of 2 broad foliaceous cut-toothed almost distinct bracts, their base coriaceous and downy, or with glandular bristles intermixed.—Thickets, N. Eng. to Ont. and Dak., and southward. Twigs and petioles often glandular-bristly.
2. C. rostràta, Ait. (Beaked Hazel-nut.) Leaves ovate or ovate-oblong, somewhat heart-shaped, pointed; involucre of united bracts, much prolonged above the ovoid nut into a narrow tubular beak, densely bristly.—N. Scotia to northern N. J., Mich., Minn., and westward, and south in the mountains to Ga. Shrub 2–6° high.
4. ÓSTRYA, Micheli. Hop-Hornbeam. Iron-Wood.
Sterile flowers in drooping cylindrical catkins, consisting of several stamens in the axil of each bract; filaments short, often forked, bearing 1-celled (half-) anthers; their tips hairy. Fertile flowers in short catkins; a pair to each deciduous bract, each of an incompletely 2-celled 2-ovuled ovary, crowned with the short bearded border of the adherent calyx, tipped with 2 long-linear stigmas, and enclosed in a tubular bractlet, which in fruit becomes a closed bladdery oblong bag, very much larger than the small and smooth nut; these inflated involucres loosely imbricated to form a sort of strobile, in appearance like that of the Hop.—Slender trees, with very hard wood, brownish furrowed bark, and foliage resembling that of Birch; leaves open and concave in the bud, more or less plaited on the straight veins. Flowers in the spring, appearing with the leaves; the sterile catkins 1–3 together from scaly buds at the tip of the branches of the preceding year; the fertile single, terminating short leafy shoots of the season. (The classical name.)
1. O. Virgínica, Willd. (American Hop-Hornbeam. Lever-wood.) Leaves oblong-ovate, taper-pointed, very sharply doubly serrate, downy beneath, with 11–15 principal veins; buds acute; involucral sacs bristly-hairy at the base.—Rich woods, common, from the Atlantic to N. Minn., Neb., E. Kan., and southward. Tree 25–45° high; hop-like strobiles full-grown in Aug.
5 CARPÌNUS, L. Hornbeam. Iron-wood.
Sterile flowers in drooping cylindrical catkins, consisting of several stamens in the axil of a simple and entire scale-like bract; filaments very short, mostly 2-forked, the forks bearing 1-celled (half-) anthers with hairy tips. Fertile flowers several, spiked in a sort of loose terminal catkin, with small deciduous bracts, each subtending a pair of flowers, as in Ostrya; but the single involucre-like bractlet is open, enlarged in fruit and foliaceous, merely subtending the small ovate several-nerved nut.—Trees or tall shrubs, with smooth close gray bark, in this and in the slender buds and straight-veined leaves resembling the Beech; leaf-buds and inflorescence as in Ostrya. (The early Latin name.)
1. C. Caroliniàna, Walter. (American Hornbeam. Blue or Water Beech.) Leaves ovate-oblong, pointed, sharply doubly serrate, soon nearly smooth; bractlets 3-lobed, halberd-shaped, sparingly cut-toothed on one side, acute. (C. Americana, Michx.)—Along streams, N. Scotia to Fla., west to Minn., Iowa, E. Kan., and Tex. Tree or shrub, 10–45° high, with ridged trunk, and very hard wood.
6. QUÉRCUS, L. Oak.