In winter, the twigs are smooth, shining, glabrous, with five-angled pith, and are marked at the base of the year's growth by ringlike scars, due to the fall of the accrescent scales of the bud of the previous season. Terminal bud not formed, the tip of the branchlet falling off in summer and leaving a small circular scar close to the uppermost axillary bud, the latter prolonging the shoot in the following season. Leaf-scars small, crescentic, three-dotted, with a short stipular scar on each side. Buds, distichous on the branchlets, unequal in size, on prominent leaf-cushions, appressed against the stem, fusiform, ¼ to ⅓ inch long; scales, ciliate and pubescent towards the tips, brownish.
Seedling:[1] Primary root tapering, wiry, flexuose; caulicle terete, pubescent, ½ inch long; cotyledons fleshy, rounded-obovate, ⅓ inch long, auricled at the base, shortly stalked, glabrous, green above, whitish beneath; stem zigzag, pubescent, giving off alternate stalked bi-serrate leaves, which resemble those of the adult plant, but are smaller and occasionally lobulate in margin.
Varieties
The common hornbeam shows little variation in the wild state, the only form worth noticing being var. carpinizza, which is found in Transylvania. In this variety the leaves are often distinctly cordate at the base with only seven to nine pairs of nerves; and the fruit-involucre has very short lateral lobes.
Under cultivation, pyramidal,[2] fastigiate, pendulous, and variegated forms have originated. In var. purpurea, the young leaves have a reddish tint. Var. incisa, Aiton,[3] has leaves with large sharp serrated teeth. A wide-branching tree of this variety at Beauport, Sussex, is 6 feet 3 inches in girth; and there is also a fine specimen at Smeaton-Hepburn, East Lothian. In var. guercifolia, Desfontaines,[4] the leaves are smaller than in the type and are irregularly and deeply cut or lobed. In this variety, leaves of the ordinary form are often present on the same branch with those of the pinnatifid kind. Two remarkable trees of this variety are reported[5] to be growing on the bowling green of the Woodrow Inn, in Cawston Parish, near Aylsham, Norfolk.
Distribution
The common hornbeam is indigenous in the south of England; but its true native limits cannot now be exactly determined, It is recorded[6] from Somerset, Wilts, Dorset, Hants, Berks, Oxford, Bucks, Herts, Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Essex, Cambridge, Suffolk, and Norfolk; but in many cases, especially in the south-western counties, the records are probably of planted and not really wild trees. In Dorset,[7] it is a very rare tree; and Townsend[8] considers it to be a doubtful native of Hampshire. Druce[9] considers it to be indigenous in Oxfordshire on the chalk, but always
- ↑ Cf. Lubbock, Seedlings, ii. 532, f. 667 (1892).
- ↑ A solitary wild specimen of the pyramidal hornbeam formerly grew in the forest of Gremsey, near Vic in France. Godron, Les Hêtres Tortillards (1869).
- ↑ Aiton, Hort. Kew, iii. 362 (1789).
- ↑ Desfontaines, Tab. Écol. Bot. Mus. Hist. Nat. 212 (1824).
- ↑ Rev. J.F. Noott in letter to Kew, March 1894.
- ↑ Watson, Comp. Cybele Brit. 311 (1870) and Topog. Bot. 355 (1873).
- ↑ Mansell-Pleydell, Flora of Dorsetshire, 246 (1895).
- ↑ Flora of Hampshire, 313 (1883).
- ↑ Flora of Oxfordshire, 268 (1886).
