Ostrya Virginiana, Willd.
Hop Hornbeam. Ironwood. Leverwood.
Habitat and Range.—In rather open woods and along highlands.
Nova Scotia to Lake Superior.
Common in all parts of New England.
Scattered throughout the whole country east of the Mississippi, ranging through western Minnesota to Nebraska, Kansas, Indian territory, and Texas.
Habit.—A small tree, 25-40 feet high and 8-12 inches in diameter at the ground, sometimes attaining, without much increase in height, a diameter of 2 feet; trunk usually slender; head irregular, often oblong or loosely and rather broadly conical; lower branches sometimes slightly declining at the extremities, but with branchlets mostly of an upward tendency; spray slender and rather stiff. Suggestive, in its habit, of the elm; in its leaves, of the black birch; and in its fruit, of clusters of hops.
Bark.—Trunk and large limbs light grayish-brown, very narrowly and longitudinally ridged, the short, thin segments in old trees often loose at the ends; the smaller branches, branchlets, and in late fall the season's shoots, dark reddish-brown.
Winter Buds and Leaves.—Buds small, oblong, pointed, invested with reddish-brown scales. Leaves simple, alternate, roughish, 2-4 inches long, 1-2 inches wide, more or less appressed-pubescent on both sides, dark green above, lighter beneath; outline ovate to oblong-ovate, sharply and for the most part doubly serrate; apex acute to acuminate; base slightly and narrowly heart-shaped, rounded or truncate, mostly with unequal sides; leafstalks short, pubescent; stipules soon falling.
Inflorescence.—April to May. Sterile flowers from wood of the preceding season, lateral or terminal, in drooping, cylindrical catkins, usually in threes; scales broad, laterally rounded, sharp-pointed, ciliate, each subtending several nearly sessile stamens, filaments sometimes forked, with anthers bearded at the tip: fertile catkins about 1 inch in length, on short leafy shoots, spreading; bracts lanceolate, tapering to a long point, ciliate, each subtending two ovaries, each ovary with adherent calyx, enclosed in a hairy bractlet; styles 2, long, linear.