314 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



most suitable name, and one not appropriated to any other tree, 

 is Tupelo, the name by which it and several other species of 

 this genus were known to some tribes of the aborigines. 



The Tupelo is always a striking, and often a very beautiful 

 tree. It usually rises to a height of not more than thirty or forty 

 feet ; but in dense, moist woods, where it has been surrounded by 

 other tall trees, I have seen it sixty or seventy feet high. No 

 tree varies more in its aspect. In the neighborhood of Boston, 

 where it abounds, especially in the low grounds in Cambridge, 

 on the borders of Jamaica Pond, and in other places in Brook- 

 line, it is a low tree, throwing out a very great number of 

 horizontal or drooping branches, forming a short, cylindrical 

 head, flat above. Where it has long stood by itself, and its nat- 

 ural tendency has been completely unimpeded,, it forms a low, 

 very broad, palm-like head. Sometimes it is pyramidal or con- 

 ical ; and sometimes the dense mass of foliage has the shape of 

 an inverted cone, very broad and fiat at top. 



The trunk, which is almost always erect, and which seldom 

 rises many feet, — commonly not more than six or seven, — be- 

 fore it throws out branches, — is invested with a dark ashy gray 

 bark, much, but not deeply broken by longitudinal furrows. In 

 very old stocks it is sometimes broken into somewhat regular 

 polygons. The branches, which are far more numerous than on 

 any other tree, frequently so close to each other, that it would be 

 difficult to find room for more, are almost uniformly horizontal 

 near the trunk, and arch downwards towards the extremities. 

 Often very crooked, they are thickly set with smaller ramifica- 

 tions, which form a short spray, projecting in every direction. 

 The bark on the new shoots is of a bright apple or reddish 

 green, on the older branchlets it is red or brownish, shining 

 through a pearly, thin epidermis. The leaves, which are alter- 

 nate on the growing shoots, but in tufts of four or more on the 

 ends of the lateral branchlets, are of a resplendent green above, 

 reflecting the light like those of a tropical plant. They are 

 somewhat paler beneath, and vary in shape from lanceolate to 

 broad oval, and obovate, and in size from one inch to four or five 

 inches in length, and from one half an inch to two inches in 

 breadth. They are usually wedge-shaped at base, sometimes 



