414 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



ed at the end, and notched by the elevation of the hard, colored 

 point, about which is often a shade of flesh-color or purple. The 

 individual flowers are very small, sessile, crowded on a common 

 receptacle, with a few minute, rounded scales at their base. A 

 calyx of one green piece, investing the ovary and ending in four 

 obtuse teeth, contains four slender, reflexed, oblong, fugacious, 

 greenish-yellow petals, four erect stamens with oblong anthers, 

 and a persistent, capitate style, somewhat shorter, rising from 

 a brownish, circular disk. 



The fruit is in bunches on the enlarged, club-shaped footstalk, 

 of a bright scarlet, oblong-egg-shaped, crowned with the dark 

 purple calyx. They are bitter and unpleasant, but, when touched 

 by the frost, help to furnish food to the robin and other birds 

 that remain with us during winter. At the time of maturity, 

 they appear in the fork of two opposite branchlets, which end in 

 the casket-shaped flower-bud of the succeeding year. 



The leaves early begin to change to a purple, and turn to a 

 rich scarlet or crimson above, with light russet beneath, or to 

 crimson on a buff or orange ground above with a glaucous pur- 

 ple beneath. These, surrounding the shining scarlet bunches 

 of berries, make the tree as beautiful an object at the close of 

 autumn as it was in the opening of summer. 



The Flowering Dogwood is of slow growth, and the wood 

 is hard, heavy and solid, of a fine, close texture, and suscep- 

 tible of a beautiful polish. It is often called box-wood, and is 

 employed as its substitute, and for the handles of chisels, ham- 

 mers, and other instruments, and for the cogs of wheels, and 

 other articles made by the turner. 



The bark is very bitter, with something of an aromatic taste. 

 According to Dr. Bigelow, it acts on the human system as a 

 tonic, an astringent and an antiseptic, approaching in its effects 

 to the character of the Peruvian bark. For this it has been 

 substituted and employed with great success in the treatment 

 of intermittent and other fevers. 



From the bark of the smaller roots the Indians obtained a 

 good scarlet color. The smaller branches, stripped of their bark 

 and used as a brush, are said to render the teeth extremely 

 white. 



