''Ostrya virginiana'', the American hophornbeam, is a species of '' Ostrya''

native Native may refer to: People * Jus soli, citizenship by right of birth * Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory ** Native Americans (disambiguation) In arts and entert ...

to eastern

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, from

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west to southern

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and eastern

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, southeast to northern

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and southwest to eastern

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. Populations from

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and

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are also regarded as the same species, although some authors prefer to separate them as a distinct species, ''Ostrya guatemalensis''. Other names include eastern hophornbeam, hardhack (in New England), ironwood, and leverwood.

Description

American hophornbeam is a small

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, ...

understory In forestry and ecology, understory (American English), or understorey (Commonwealth English), also known as underbrush or undergrowth, includes plant life growing beneath the forest canopy without penetrating it to any great extent, but abo ...

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

growing to tall and

trunk Trunk may refer to: Biology * Trunk (anatomy), synonym for torso * Trunk (botany), a tree's central superstructure * Trunk of corpus callosum, in neuroanatomy * Elephant trunk, the proboscis of an elephant Computing * Trunk (software), in rev ...

diameter. The

bark Bark may refer to: * Bark (botany), an outer layer of a woody plant such as a tree or stick * Bark (sound), a vocalization of some animals (which is commonly the dog) Places * Bark, Germany * Bark, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, Poland Arts, e ...

is brown to gray-brown, with narrow shaggy plates flaking off, while younger twigs and branches are smoother and gray, with small

lenticel A lenticel is a porous tissue consisting of cells with large intercellular spaces in the periderm of the secondarily thickened organs and the bark of woody stems and roots of dicotyledonous flowering plants. It functions as a pore, providing a ...

s. Very young twigs are sparsely fuzzy to thickly hairy; the hairs (

trichome Trichomes (); ) are fine outgrowths or appendages on plants, algae, lichens, and certain protists. They are of diverse structure and function. Examples are hairs, glandular hairs, scales, and papillae. A covering of any kind of hair on a p ...

s) drop off by the next year. The

leaves A leaf ( : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, st ...

are

ovoid An oval () is a closed curve in a plane which resembles the outline of an egg. The term is not very specific, but in some areas ( projective geometry, technical drawing, etc.) it is given a more precise definition, which may include either o ...

acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse ef ...

, long and broad,

pinnate Pinnation (also called pennation) is the arrangement of feather-like or multi-divided features arising from both sides of a common axis. Pinnation occurs in biological morphology, in crystals, such as some forms of ice or metal crystals, an ...

ly veined, with a

doubly serrate The following is a list of terms which are used to describe leaf morphology in the description and taxonomy of plants. Leaves may be simple (a single leaf blade or lamina) or compound (with several leaflets). The edge of the leaf may be regular o ...

d margin. The upper surface is mostly hairless, while the lower surface is sparsely to moderately fuzzy (rarely densely hairy). The

flower A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechanis ...

s are

catkin A catkin or ament is a slim, cylindrical flower cluster (a spike), with inconspicuous or no petals, usually wind-pollinated (anemophilous) but sometimes insect-pollinated (as in '' Salix''). They contain many, usually unisexual flowers, arrang ...

s ( spikes) produced in early spring at the same time as the new leaves appear. The staminate (

male Male (symbol: ♂) is the sex of an organism that produces the gamete (sex cell) known as sperm, which fuses with the larger female gamete, or ovum, in the process of fertilization. A male organism cannot reproduce sexually without access to ...

) catkins are long, and arranged in groups of 1–4. The pistillate (female) catkins are long, containing 10–30 flowers each. Pollinated female flowers develop into small

nutlet A nut is a fruit consisting of a hard or tough nutshell protecting a kernel which is usually edible. In general usage and in a culinary sense, a wide variety of dry seeds are called nuts, but in a botanical context "nut" implies that the shell ...

s long fully enclosed in a papery sac-shaped involucre long and wide. The involucre changes from greenish-white to dull brown as the fruit matures. American hophornbeam is similar to its close relative American hornbeam (''Carpinus caroliniana''), which can be distinguished by its smooth bark and nutlets enclosed in open, three-lobed bracts. Ironwood tree bark.jpg, Bark of a mature tree Eastern Hophornbeam - Flickr - treegrow (4).jpg, Male catkins hanging from the branches in spring (

United States Botanic Garden The United States Botanic Garden (USBG) is a botanical garden on the grounds of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., near Garfield Circle. The Botanic Garden is supervised by the Congress through the Architect of the Capitol, who ...

) Eastern Hophornbeam - Flickr - treegrow (3).jpg, Leaf color in autumn Ostrya virginiana winter.jpg, Two trees in winter with some dried leaves still hanging on their branches ( marcescence) Ostrya virginiana Blue Ridge.jpg, An exceptionally large trunk

Subdivisions

There are two subspecies: * ''Ostrya virginiana'' subsp. ''guatemalensis'' (H.J.P.Winkl.) A.E.Murray – central and southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador * ''Ostrya virginiana'' subsp. ''virginiana'' – eastern half of United States, eastern Canada Populations along the Atlantic coast have slightly smaller leaves, and are sometimes separated as ''O. virginiana'' var. ''lasia'' Fernald.

Habitat and ecology

In temperate areas of the US and Canada, ''Ostrya virginiana'' is found in lowland and foothill forests, where it is predominantly an understory tree. In Mexico and Central America, ''Ostrya virginiana'' is found in

cloud forest A cloud forest, also called a water forest, primas forest, or tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF), is a generally tropical or subtropical, evergreen, montane, moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud ...

s and humid portions of mid-elevation oak, pine–oak, and pine forests between 1200 and 2800 meters elevation.Mario González-Espinosa, Jorge A. Meave, Francisco G. Lorea-Hernández, Guillermo Ibarra-Manríquez and Adrian C. Newton, eds (2011). ''The Red List of Mexican Cloud Forest Trees''. Fauna & Flora International, Cambridge, UK. 2011. The buds and catkins are important source of winter food for some

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

s, notably

ruffed grouse The ruffed grouse (''Bonasa umbellus'') is a medium-sized grouse occurring in forests from the Appalachian Mountains across Canada to Alaska. It is the most widely distributed game bird in North America. It is non-migratory. It is the only specie ...

(''Bonasa umbellus''). Additionally, the nutlets and buds are eaten by birds, deer, and rabbits.

Uses

It is grown as an

ornamental plant Ornamental plants or garden plants are plants that are primarily grown for their beauty but also for qualities such as scent or how they shape physical space. Many flowering plants and garden varieties tend to be specially bred cultivars that ...

and is sometimes used as a street tree. Its wood is very resilient and is valued for making tool handles and fence posts. Being a diffuse porous hardwood and having extremely high density and resistance to compression, it is an excellent material for the construction of wooden longbows.

References

External links

Bioimages: ''Ostrya virginiana''.

* ttp://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=62 Virginia Tech Dendrology. ''Ostrya virginiana'' Fact Sheet.
University of Connecticut. Plants Database. ''Ostrya virginiana''.

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20060911072830/http://www.yale.edu/fes505b/hophorn.html Yale University. Cyber Flora. ''Ostrya virginiana''. {{Taxonbar, from=Q1489573 virginiana Hardwood forest plants Trees of Eastern Canada Trees of the Eastern United States Flora of the Appalachian Mountains Trees of the Northeastern United States Trees of the Southeastern United States Trees of Central America Trees of Mexico Trees of humid continental climate Plants described in 1768 Trees of the North-Central United States Trees of the South-Central United States Trees of Western Canada Trees of North America Trees of Southern Mexico Trees of the United States Trees of Canada Trees of the Great Lakes region (North America) Trees of the Southern United States Flora of the Sierra Madre Occidental Flora of the Sierra Madre Oriental Cloud forest flora of Mexico