Distribution. Borders of streams and swamps, generally in deep rich moist soil; Nova Scotia and southern and western Quebec to the northern shores of Georgian Bay, southward to the shores of Indian River and those of Tampa Bay, Florida, and westward to central Minnesota, eastern Iowa (Sharpy County), eastern Nebraska (reported), eastern Kansas, eastern Oklahoma, and eastern Texas; reappearing on the mountains of southern Mexico and Central America; common in the eastern and central states; most abundant and of its largest size on the western slopes of the southern Alleghany Mountains and in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas.
2. OSTRYA Scop. Hop Hornbeam.
Trees, with scaly bark, heavy hard strong close-grained wood, and acute elongated winter-buds formed in early summer and covered by numerous imbricated scales, the inner lengthening after the opening of the bud. Leaves open and concave in the bud; petioles slender, nearly terete, hairy; stipules strap-shaped to oblong-obovate. Flowers: staminate in long clustered sessile or short-stalked aments developed in early summer from lateral buds near the ends of short lateral branchlets of the year and coated while young with hoary tomentum, naked and conspicuous during the winter, and composed of 3—14 stamens crowded on a pilose receptacle adnate to the base of an ovate concave scale rounded and abruptly short-pointed at the apex, ciliate on the margins, longer than the stamens; filaments short, 2-branched, each branch bearing a 1-celled half-anther hairy at the apex; pistillate in erect lax aments terminal on short leafy branches of the year, in pairs at the base of an elongated ovate acute leaf-like ciliate scale persistent until midsummer, each flower inclosed in a hairy sack-like involucre formed by the union of a bract and 2 bractlets; calyx adnate to the ovary, denticulate on the free narrow border. Nut ovoid, acute, flattened, obscurely longitudinally ribbed, crowned with the remnants of the calyx, marked at the narrow base by a small circular pale scar, inclosed in the much enlarged pale membranaceous conspicuously longitudinally veined reticulate-venulose involucres of the flower, short, pointed and hairy at the apex, hirsute at the base, with sharp rigid stinging hairs, imbricated into a short strobile fully grown at midsummer, and suspended on a slender hairy stem.
Ostrya is widely distributed in the northern hemisphere from Nova Scotia to Texas, northern Arizona, and to the highlands of southern Mexico and Guatemala in the New World, and through southern Europe and southwestern Asia, and in northern Japan and on the Island of Quelpart in the Old World. Of the four species now recognized two are North American.
Ostrya is the classical name of the Hop Hornbeam.
CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES.
Leaves oblong-lanceolate, acuminate or acute at apex.1. [O. virginiana] (A, C). Leaves elliptic or obovate, acute or rounded at apex.2. [O. Knowltonii] (F).
1. [Ostrya virginiana] K. Koch. Hop Hornbeam. Ironwood.
Leaves oblong-lanceolate, gradually narrowed into a long slender point or acute at apex, narrowed and rounded, cordate, or wedge-shaped at the often unequal base, sharply serrate, with slender incurved callous teeth terminating at first in tufts of caducous hairs, when they unfold light bronze-green, glabrous above and coated below on the midrib and primary veins with long pale hairs, at maturity thin and extremely tough, dark dull yellow-green above, light yellow-green and furnished with conspicuous tufts of pale hairs in the axils of the veins below, 3′—5′ long, 1½′—2′ wide, with a slender midrib impressed and puberulous above, light yellow and pubescent below, and numerous slender veins forked near the margins; turning clear yellow before falling in the autumn; petioles hairy about ¼′ long; stipules rounded and often short-pointed at apex, ciliate on the margins with long pale hairs, hairy on the back, about ½′ long and ⅛′ wide. Flowers: staminate aments about ½′ long during their first season, with light red-brown rather loosely imbricated scales narrowed into a long slender point, becoming when the flowers open 2′ long, with broadly obovate scales rounded and abruptly contracted at apex into a short point, ciliate on the margins, green tinged with red above the middle, light brown toward the base; pistillate aments slender, about ¼′ long, on thin hairy stems, their scales lanceolate, acute, light green, often flushed with red above the middle, hirsute at the apex, decreasing in size from the lowest. Fruit: nuts ⅓′ long, about ⅛′ wide, rather abruptly narrowed below the apex, their involucres in clusters 1½′—2′ long and ⅔′—1′ wide, on slender hairy stems about 1′ in length.