HOP HORNBEAM.
Ostrya Virginiana, Willd.
The hop hornbeam has habits like the other ironwood and an equal reputation for the hardness of its wood. The tree, however, wears scaly, shaggy brown bark, suggesting in its manner of scaling off the shagbark hickory. Its outlets are packed separate in loose papery bags, and to gether form a loose, cone-like cluster, like the fruit of a hop vine. The wind scatters these buoyant little bags, that travel far.
This tree often twists in growing, and the trunk shows spiral furrows. " Hard-tack," "beetle-wood," wood "—all take us back to the pioneer who put this wood to such good uses, and who was glad to have these little trees growing in his woodlot. In hickories, even, he had not the equal of them for strength and hardness.