364 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



Section First. — Flowers all similar and fertile. 

 Sp. 1. The Naked Viburnum. Withe Rod. V. nudum. L. 



A slender, erect shrub, from six to twelve feet high, growing 

 in swamps and wet woods from Newfoundland to Georgia. 

 The recent shoots are dark green, with numerous minute, rust- 

 colored scales. The older stems are covered with a light ash- 

 colored bark. The fruit-stalks, leaf-stalks, under surface of 

 the leaves, and the mid-rib somewhat above, are sprinkled with 

 brown, rusty dots, or scales. The leaves are opposite, two or 

 three inches long, very variable in width, on short, flattened 

 petioles which nearly or quite embrace the smaller branches, 

 varying from broad-lanceolate to oval-elliptic, obovate and 

 sometimes rhomboidal, the extreme ones more or less atten- 

 uated at both extremities, the lower ones obtuse at each end, 

 entire, obsoletely serrate or crenate, coriaceous, smooth and 

 shining above, beneath dotted with rusty brown scales. Foot- 

 stalks rather long, channelled, and slightly winged. 



The flowers are white, or yellowish white, in terminal cymes, 

 on a footstalk half an inch to two inches long. The branches, 

 radiating from a single point, are flattened, channelled and an- 

 gular, and much sub-divided, with linear, fugacious bracts at 

 the base of the pedicels. Flowers crowded ; the calyx ending in 

 five, thin, membranous, white, obtuse teeth ; the corolla small, 

 cup-shaped, with obtuse segments. Filaments very long; an- 

 thers small, yeltow. The flowers expand in May and June. 



The fruit is apple-shaped, compressed, with the minute calyx 

 in the terminal cavity, one quarter of an inch long, of a deep blue 

 color, and with a glaucous bloom; it is ripe in September. It 

 has a sweetish taste and may be eaten. The stone is flattish, 

 with an obtuse point, slightly hollowed on one side and convex 

 on the other. The slender, tough rods of the previous year are 

 much used, in some parts of the country, to bind sheaves. 



Sp. 2. The Sweet Viburnum. V. lentago. L. 



A beautiful, small tree, rising sometimes to the height of fif- 

 teen or twenty feet, with rich foliage, and clothed, in June, with 



