The reason for adopting the above name is explained below, under B. lutea.
specimens: Wakehurst Place, Sussex, in Pheasantry, 46 × 3[3/4] ft (1981); Tilgate Park, Sussex, 66 × 7 ft at 3 ft (1982); Westonbirt, Glos., Willesley Avenue, 42 × 3[1/2] ft (1980); Edinburgh Botanic Garden, pl. 1904, 44 × 3[1/2] ft (1981); Innes House, Moray, 36 × 5[1/4] ft at 2 ft (1980); Tannadyce, Angus, 58 × 2 ft (1981).
This species, like B. lenta, has an inner bark smelling of oil of wintergreen, though this character is not nearly so marked as in its ally. The two are normally quite distinct in their bark, which is cherry-like in B. lenta but flaking in B. alleghaniensis. However, this distinction is not completely reliable as the latter does occasionally have a close bark in the wild, and such trees have botanical status as B. alleghaniensis f. fallax (Fasset) Brayshaw (B. lutea f. fallax Fasset). This form occurs in southern Quebec and Ontario, and has been wrongly identified as B. lenta – whence the epithet (T. C. Brayshaw in Canad. Field-Nat., Vol. 80 (1966), pp. 160-61).