528 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



bark on the young shoots is smooth and of a rich apple-green, 

 becoming afterwards of a soft glaucous or whitish color. Before 

 opening, the leaves are enclosed by the stipules, which, fall- 

 ing, leave rings encircling the branch ; when young, the leaves 

 are covered with a pubescence, which, beneath, has a silken 

 lustre. They are entire, elliptical, or slightly obovate, on short, 

 tapering petioles, and, when mature, smooth, and light green 

 above, pale-glaucous beneath, and of a soft, leathery texture. 

 The mid-rib is prominent beneath, for the whole length of the 

 leaf. The calyx of the solitary, terminal flowers, consists of 3 

 concave, obovate, membranaceous sepals, resembling petals, but 

 less delicate in texture. The corolla has usually 9 delicately 

 white petals, tapering at base, and rounded at the extremity, 

 arranged in 3 circles, and mutually enfolding each other before 

 expansion. The stamens are very numerous, SO to 100 or 

 more, in spiral lines on the conical, green torus, or receptacle, — 

 3 or 4 of the outer ones often partly turned into petals. Anthers 

 very long, yellow, pointed, set upon the inner side of the short 

 filament and opening inwardly. Styles many, on a conical re- 

 ceptacle ; stigmas long, yellow, turned back at the tip, and rising 

 much above the ends of the long anthers. The fruit is a cone 

 about two inches long, covered with scale-like, imbricated ova- 

 ries, from which, when mature, escape the scarlet, obovate seeds, 

 which, instead of falling at once to the ground, remain some 

 time suspended by a slender thread. 



No plant is, at every season and in every condition, more 

 beautiful. The flower, two or three inches broad, is as beau- 

 tiful and almost as fragrant as the water lily. Like most other 

 plants, growing naturally in wet ground, it may easily be made 

 to thrive in dry, but will not then continue long in flower. In 

 moist situations, particularly if protected through the winter by 

 a covering of boughs or mats, it continues to produce its flowers 

 to the end of the warm season. 



Like other plants of this genus, the Small Magnolia possesses 

 valuable properties as a tonic and as a warm stimulant and 

 diaphoretic ; and it has been used with great success in chronic 

 rheumatism, in intermittent fevers, and particularly in fever and 

 ague. To secure the virtues of the plant, a tincture should be 



