334 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



it throws out its branches with a gentle, double curvature, to a 

 distance on every side, and forms a broad, round head, of great 

 beauty. The trunk is covered with a whitish bark, which, in 

 very young trees, is nearly smooth ; on older trees, it is broken 

 by deep furrows crossing each other obliquely, into irregular, 

 square, or lozenge-shaped plates, and on very old stems becomes 

 smooth again from the rough plates scaling off. The bark of 

 the branches is smooth, of a grayish green, indistinctly dotted 

 with gray: while, on the somewhat stout young shoots, it is of 

 a smooth, polished, deep green, with long white dots. 



The leaves are opposite, compound, twelve or fifteen inches 

 long, the stalks much swollen at base and at the joints, round, 

 smooth, and tapering. The leaflets are usually seven, (five to 

 nine,) from three to five inches long and one or two broad, on 

 compressed petioles, channelled above, four or five lines long. 

 They vary in form from egg-shaped to lance-shaped, elliptic, 

 oblong and inversely egg-shaped, tapering to a long point, rather 

 acute at base, entire or slightly dentate, or serrate, smooth above, 

 very pale or glaucous, and somewhat hairy along the veins be- 

 neath. The odd leaflet is on a long stalk. The young leaves 

 are very downy, but become almost perfectly smooth. The 

 buds are short and rust-colored, smooth; terminal buds large. 



The flowers are in opposite fascicles or bunches, near the ends 

 of the branches, in the axils of the last year's leaves. The 

 fertile flowers are on a smooth, branched, tapering, purplish 

 rachis, with opposite branches, each branch terminating in a 

 flower. Calyx deeply two-parted, the parts divided slightly. 

 Ovary flattened, elliptic; style tapering; stigma bifid. The 

 footstalks have two opposite scales, like bud-scales, near the 

 base, and beneath each ramification. In the fertile flowers, the 

 two sterile stamens, when present, are opposite, at the base of 

 the ovary. The staminate are in close, dense, much-branched 

 fascicles. At the end of each very short branch, in a flat cup 

 with four teeth, are two sessile or nearly sessile brown stamens, 

 parallel and one eighth of an inch long. The keys or samarse 

 are on angular, tapering, diverging stalks, dividing by threes, 

 and from five to seven inches long. The keys are one and a 

 half inches long, cylindrical at the base, which is surrounded 



