326 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



making the plant look lower than it is ; they have a jointed 

 appearance, each joint enlarging upwards, and seeming to have 

 been drawn out from the one below it. Bark grayish yellow, 

 very tough. On the last year's shoots, it is of a greenish or yel- 

 lowish bronze, with a pearly lustre. Leaves alternate, two or 

 three inches long, and half as wide, oval or obovate, entire, 

 tapering at each extremity, green and smooth above, pale or 

 whitish and rather downy beneath, on short stalks. The 

 flowers appear in April or May, and fall before the leaves ex- 

 pand. " Previously to their emerging, they exist in miniature 

 within a small hairy bud, which occupies a sheath or cavity in 

 the end of each flowering branch."* There are usually three 

 from each bud, with their short footstalks cohering. They are 

 half an inch long, of a pale or greenish white or yellowish 

 color, pendent, lateral, from the midst of the young unexpanded 

 leaves. The corolla-like calyx is monosepalous, tubular, trum- 

 pet-shaped, or bell-shaped, contracted at base, and in the middle, 

 enlarging upwards, and ending in an irregularly and slightly 

 toothed border. Stamens eight, alternately longer, conspicu- 

 ously terminated by ovoid anthers, projecting, on slender fila- 

 ments, which proceed from the lower part of the tube. Style 

 curved, somewhat longer than the stamens, proceeding from the 

 side of a roundish ovary. Berry small, oval, containing one, 

 compressed, ovate seed. 



This plant grows in wet, marshy and shady places from 

 Canada to Georgia. It is conspicuous, when in flower, for the 

 number of its yellow blossoms, which fade and fall rapidly as 

 the leaves expand. 



The peculiar properties of the family are remarkable in this 

 plant. The fresh bark produces a sensation of heat in the 

 stomach, and at last brings on vomiting. The wood is very 

 pliable, and the bark of singular tenacity and toughness. It 

 has such strength that a man cannot pull apart so much as 

 covers a branch of half or a third of an inch in diameter. It is 

 used by millers and others for thongs. The aborigines used it 

 as cordage. 



* Bigelow. 



