Index    Handbook of the Trees of New England by Lorin Low Dame, Henry Brooks

BETULA.

Inflorescence.—In scaly catkins, sterile and fertile on the same tree, appearing with or before the leaves from shoots of the previous season,—sterile catkins terminal and lateral, formed in summer, erect or inclined in the bud, drooping when expanded in the following spring; sterile flowers usually 3, subtended by a shield-shaped bract with 2 bractlets; each flower consisting of a 1-scaled calyx and 2 anthers, which appear to be 4 from the division of the filaments into two parts, each of which bears an anther cell: fertile catkins erect or inclined at the end of very short leafy branchlets; fertile flowers subtended by a 3-lobed bract falling with the nuts; bractlets none; calyx none; corolla none; consisting of 2-3 ovaries crowned with 2 spreading styles.