XVI. 3. THE SINGLE BERRY BLACK ALDER. 345 



with an apple green bark, which, on the large branches, turns 

 to a pearly gray, and on the older stems is of a polished and 

 clouded dark color, whence the plant derives its common name. 

 The leaves are two or three inches long and half as broad, lance- 

 shaped, oval, or inversely egg-shaped, acute at both ends, often 

 abruptly at the extremity, sharply serrate, smooth above, downy 

 along the prominent veins beneath, on footstalks half an inch 

 long. The flowers are white, the stamen-bearing, in crowded 

 bunches, of from three to twelve in the axils of the leaves, on 

 stems one or two lines long, with minute brown scales at the 

 base. The calyx consists of six small, appressed, rounded or 

 jagged segments. The corolla is of one piece, wheel-shaped, 

 ending in six or seven, rounded, spreading, or recurved seg- 

 ments, just below the angles of which, within the tube, are the 

 short stamens, with large brown anthers opening at the sides 

 and discharging orange pollen. On the fertile flowers, which are 

 single or crowded, on very short stems, the stamens are very short, 

 and the false anthers are white and form a part of the filament. 

 The berries are of a bright scarlet, round, or slightly compressed, 

 about a quarter of an inch in diameter, solitary, or in bunches 

 of two or three, and remain long on the bush. The persistent 

 calyx, at the base, is of a darker color, and the stigma, which 

 crowns the berry, is brown. The pulp is yellowish, and envel- 

 opes six or eight lunate seeds. The flowers expand in June. 

 The berries are ripe in September. 



The bark and berries of the black alder are somewhat bitter 

 and astringent, and have been sometimes substituted for Peru- 

 vian bark in the treatment of intermittent fevers. The bark 

 has also been considered of great use, both taken internally, and 

 employed as a wash, in cases of incipient gangrene and in the 

 cure of eruptions on the skin. — See Bigeloitfs Med. Bol., Ill, 141. 



Sp. 2. The Single Berry Black Alder. P. Icevigdlas. Pursh. 

 Leaves and fruit figured in Abbott's Insects of Georgia, II, Plate 86. 



A beautiful shrub, six, eight, or ten feet high, with grayish 

 branches, scattered with minute dots of the same color, aud a 

 smooth, alder-like trunk with brownish green bark, clouded at 

 45 



