Crossword-Solution: CILIATE 7 letters, 11 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 9

Leaves 4-6 inches long and nearly as wide, yellowish-green at first, becoming dark green and smooth on the upper surface with the exception of a _minute pubescence along the veins_, dull light green beneath, finely serrate with incurved glandular points, usually ciliate with minute stiff, whitish hairs; base heart-shaped; apex short-pointed; petioles about 1-1-1/2 inches long, _more or less hairy_, somewhat flattened at right angles to the blade; stipules short, ovate, acute, soon falling.

Appearing with the leaves from the axils of the short, lateral shoots, in catkins, sterile and fertile on different trees, stalked,--sterile spreading, narrowly cylindrical; calyx none; corolla none; bracts entire, rounded to oblong, villous, ciliate; stamens about 5: fertile catkins spreading; calyx none; corolla none; bracts ovate to narrowly oblong, acute, villous; ovary short-stalked, with two small glands at its base, ovate-conical, sometimes obovate, smooth; stigmas 2, short.

Sterile flowers from growth of the preceding season in short, stunted-looking, lateral catkins, mostly single; scales ovate or rounded, obtuse, each subtending several stamens; filaments very short, mostly 2-forked; anthers bearded at the tip: fertile flowers at the ends of leafy shoots of the season, in loose catkins; bractlets foliaceous, each subtending a green, ovate, acute, ciliate, deciduous scale, each scale subtending two pistils with long reddish styles.

Sterile catkins usually in threes, 2-4 inches long, scales 2-3-flowered: fertile catkins bright green, cylindrical, stalked; bracts 3-lobed, the central lobe much the longest, tomentose, ciliate.

Earliest of the birches to ripen its seed; fruiting catkins 1-2 inches long, cylindrical, erect or spreading; bracts with the 3 lobes nearly equal in width, spreading, the central lobe the longest: nut ovate to obovate, ciliate.