| 1. Winter buds. |
| 2. Flower-buds. |
| 3. Flowering branch. |
| 4-6. Sterile flowers. |
| 7. Fertile flower. |
| 8. Bract. |
| 9. Fruiting branch. |
| 10. Fruit. |
Betula nigra, L.
Red Birch. River Birch.
Habitat and Range.—Along rivers, ponds, and woodlands inundated a part of the year.
Doubtfully and indefinitely reported from Canada.
No stations in Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, or Connecticut; New Hampshire,—found sparingly along streams in the southern part of the state; abundant along the banks of Beaver brook, Pelham (F. W. Batchelder); Massachusetts,—along the Merrimac river and its tributaries, bordering swamps in Methuen and ponds in North Andover.
South, east of the Alleghany mountains, to Florida; west, locally through the northern tier of states to Minnesota and along the Gulf states to Texas; western limits, Nebraska, Kansas, Indian territory, and Missouri.
Habit.—A medium-sized tree, 30-50 feet high, with a diameter at the ground of 1-1½ feet; reaching much greater dimensions southward. The trunk, frequently beset with small, leafy, reflexed branchlets, and often only less frayed and tattered than that of the yellow birch, develops a light and feathery head of variable outline, with numerous slender branches, the upper long and drooping, the reddish spray clothed with abundant dark-green foliage.
Bark.—Reddish, more or less separable into layers, fraying into shreddy, cinnamon-colored fringes; in old trees thick, dark reddish-brown, and deeply furrowed; branches dark red or cinnamon, giving rise to the name of "red birch"; season's shoots downy, pale-dotted.