A tree 20°—25° high with a short trunk, rarely more than 12′ or 14′ in diameter, ascending spreading and somewhat pendulous branches forming a broad open head, and slender branchlets, when they first appear light green glabrous or puberulous and covered with lustrous resinous glands persistent during their second season, and dark red-brown in their first winter; more commonly shrubby, with many thin spreading stems forming open clusters, 15°—20° high; often much lower, and frequently crowded in almost impenetrable thickets. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, very resinous, chestnut-brown, ¼′ long. Bark about ¼′ thick, dark bronze color, very lustrous, marked by pale brown longitudinal lenticels becoming on old trunks often 6′—8′ long and ¼′ wide. Wood soft and strong, light brown, with thick lighter-colored sapwood; sometimes used for fuel and fencing.
Distribution. Moist soil near the banks of streams usually in mountain cañons; generally distributed, although nowhere very common: valley of the Saskatchewan (Saskatoon), Saskatchewan, westward to the basin of the upper Fraser and Pease Rivers, British Columbia, southward along the Rocky Mountains to eastern Utah, northern New Mexico and Arizona, the valleys of the Shasta region and the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, northern California, and eastward in the United States to the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Black Hills of South Dakota, and northwestern Nebraska. Passing into
Betula fontinalis var. Piperi Sarg.
Betula Piperi Britt.
A tree occasionally 50°—60° high with a tall trunk 12′—18′ in diameter, short spreading branches, and usually longer and often narrower strobiles.
Distribution. Spokane, Spokane County, Almota and Pullman, Whitman County, eastern Washington.
9. [Betula Eastwoodæ] Sarg.
Leaves broad-ovate to elliptic, acute, rounded or abruptly short-pointed at apex, coarsely serrate except at the cuneate base, thick, glabrous, dark green above, pale below, reticulate-venulose, the veinlets more conspicuous on the lower surface, 1′—1½′ long, ¾′—1½′ wide; petioles slender, glabrous ⅕′—⅓′ in length; stipules scarious, ovate-oblong, rounded at apex. Flowers: staminate aments usually solitary or in pairs, sessile, 1′—1¼′ long, ⅕′ thick, with broadly ovate pubescent dark red scales acute and apiculate at apex; pistillate aments ½′ long, about 1/12′ thick, with acute light green scales. Fruit: strobiles pendulous on peduncles ⅓′—½′ long, cylindric, ¾′ in length, about ⅙′ thick, their scales glabrous longer than broad, the lobes narrowed at the rounded apex, ciliate, the lateral slightly spreading, one third shorter than the terminal lobe.