| 1. Branch with sterile flowers. |
| 2. Sterile flower, back view. |
| 3. Sterile flower, side view. |
| 4. Scales of sterile flower. |
| 5. Branch with fertile catkins. |
| 6. Fertile flower. |
| 7. Fruiting catkins, mature. |
| 8. Branch with mature leaves. |
Populus candicans, Ait.
Populus balsamifera, var. candicans, Gray.
Balm of Gilead.
Habitat and Range.—In a great variety of soils; usually in cultivated or pasture lands in the vicinity of dwellings; infrequently found in a wild state. The original site of this tree has not been definitely agreed upon. Professor L. H. Bailey reports that it is indigenous in Michigan, and northern collectors find both sexes in New Hampshire and Vermont; while in central and southern New England the staminate tree is rarely if ever seen, and the pistillate flowers seldom if ever mature perfect fruit. The evidence seems to indicate a narrow belt extending through northern New Hampshire, Vermont and Michigan, with the intermediate southern sections of the Province of Ontario as the home of the Balm of Gilead.
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick,—occasional; Ontario,—frequent.
New England,—occasional throughout.
South to New Jersey; west to Michigan and Minnesota.
Habit.—A medium-sized tree, 40-60 feet high; trunk 1-3 feet in diameter, straight or inclined, sometimes beset with a few crooked, bushy branchlets; head very variable in shape and size; solitary in open ground, commonly broad-based, spacious, and pyramidal, among other trees more often rather small; loosely and irregularly branched, with sparse, coarse, and often crooked spray; foliage dark green, handsome, and abundant; all parts characterized by a strong and peculiar resinous fragrance. A single tree multiplying by suckers often becomes parent of a grove covering half an acre, more or less, made up of trees of all ages and sizes.
Bark.—Bark of trunk and lower portions of large branches dark gray, rough, irregularly striate and firm in old trees; in young trees and upon smaller branches smooth, soft grayish-green, often flanged by prominent ridges running down the stalk from the vertices of the triangular leaf-scars; season's shoots often flanged, shining reddish or olive green, with occasional longitudinal gray lines, viscid.