392 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



Sp. 1. The Mountain Laurel. Clamoun. Spoonwood. 



K. latifblia. L. 



Figured in Bigelow's Medical Botany, I, Plate 13 ; also in Catesby's Carolina, 

 II, Plate 98 ; Abbott's Insects, I, Plate 37 ; and in Audubon's Birds, I, 

 Plate 55. 



This extremely beautiful shrub occurs in various parts of the 

 State ; on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, at Cohasset, in 

 several points on both sides of Buzzard's Bay, in the neighbor- 

 hood of Newburyport and Lowell, in many parts of Worcester 

 County, on every side of Wachusett, and in the towns on both 

 declivities of the Green Mountains. In the deep, shady ravines 

 of these mountains, it sometimes attains a height of fifteen or 

 even twenty feet, with a diameter of three or four inches. In 

 most other places, and especially on open ground, it rarely ex- 

 ceeds four or five feet in height. On an open, rocky pasture of 

 many acres, south of Meeting-house Pond in Westboro', it forms 

 large, close, clumps or islets, intersected by plots and alleys of 

 grass. In June and July, when every one of these innumerable 

 green islets is crowned with white or rose-colored flowers, and 

 cattle are feeding on the grass or lying under the few oaks 

 which are scattered through the pasture, — the whole, with the 

 lake and its fringe of trees, is worth going out of one's way 

 to see. 



The Indians called this plant clamoun. It is sometimes called 

 spoonwood, rarely calico bush ; most frequently, mountain lau- 

 rel, or broad-leaved Kalmia. 



The stem of the mountain laurel is slender, with branches in 

 twos or threes, or in imperfect whorls. The bark on the recent 

 branchlets is of a yellowish green, which in a year begins to 

 turn brown, and afterwards becomes ash-colored. The epider- 

 mis on the older stems easily and often peals off in long plates, 

 leaving a brownish or grayish bark. The principal stem in old 

 stocks is covered with a grayish brown, entire bark, cleft regu- 

 larly with long, smooth clefts. This difference in bark often 

 gives the branches the appearance of having been grafted. The 

 leaves are scattered, opposite, or in whorls or tufts, from two to 

 four inches long, and two fifths as broad, oval, acute at each 



