AMERICAN HORNBEAM.
Carpinus Carolinianum, Walt.
The American hornbeam has bluish gray bark, very fine in texture, from which the name "blue beech," is common in some localities. "Water beech" points out the tree's preference for rich swamp land.
The trunk and limbs are strangely swollen, sometimes like a fluted column, oftener irregularly, the swelling under the bark suggesting the muscular development of a gymnast's arm.
In favorable places the hornbeams grow into regular oval heads, their branches dividing into a multitude of wiry, supple twigs. Crowded under oaks and other forest growth, they crouch and writhe; and their heads flatten into tangled masses of foliage.
The delicate leaves, strong-ribbed, oval, pointed, turn to red and orange in autumn. (See illustration, page 87.) The paired nutlets are provided with a parachute each, so that the wind can sow them broadcast. This wing is leafy in texture, shaped like a maple leaf, and curved into the shape of a boat. After they have broken apart, the nut
lets hang by threads, tough as hornbeam fibres always are.
At last, away they sail, to start new trees if they fall in moist soil.
The European hornbeam was a favorite tree for making the "pleached alleys," of which old-world garden-lovers were proud. A row of trees on each side of a promenade were pruned and trained to cover an arching framework, and to interlace their supple branches so that at length no other framework was needed, and one walked through a tunnel of green so closely interlaced as to make walls and roof that shut out light and wind and rain! Hedges, fences, and many fancies of the gardener were worked out with this hornbeam, so willingly did it lend itself to cutting and moulding into curious forms.