CORNACE^ 



717 



erect wand-like branches forming a narrow irregular rather open head, and slender 

 branchlets marked by numerous small pale lenticels, light green and puberulous when 

 they first appear, pale red, lustrous, and puberulous during their first winter, light 

 reddish brown in their second year, and ultimately light gray-brown or gray; usually 

 shrubby. Winter-buds acute, compressed, pubescent, sessile, or stalked, about ^' 

 long, with 2 pairs of opposite scales, the terminal nearly twice as large as the com- 

 pressed lateral buds. Bark of the trunk about ^' thick, and divided by shallow 

 fissures into narrow interrupted ridges broken into small closely appressed dark red- 

 brown scales. Wood close-grained, hard, pale brown, with thick cream-colored 

 sap wood. 



Distribution. Northern shores of Lake Erie to Minnesota, eastern Nebraska and 

 Kansas, and through Missouri and the Indian Territory to eastern Texas, Missis- 

 sippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida; probably only arborescent on the rich 

 bottom-lands of southern Arkansas and eastern Texas. 



4. Cornus alternifolia, L. Dog-wood. 



Leaves mostly alternate, clustered at the ends of the branches, rarely opposite, 

 oval or ovate, gradually contracted at the apex into long slender points, wedge- 

 shaped or occasionally somewhat rounded at the base, obscurely crenulate-toothed 



on the slightly thickened and reflexed margins, when they unfold coated on the 

 lower surface with dense silvery white tomentum, and faintly tinged with red and 

 pilose above, and at maturity membranaceous, bright yellow-green, glabrous or 

 sparsely pubescent on the upper, pale or sometimes nearly white and covered with 

 appressed hairs on the lower surface, 3'-o' long, 2^-3^' wide, with broad orange- 

 colored midribs slightly impressed above, and about 6 pairs of primary veins parallel 

 with their sides, in the autumn turning yellow or yellow and scarlet; their petioles 

 slender, pubescent, grooved, l^'-2' long, with enlarged clasping bases. Flowers 

 cream color, opening from the beginning of May to the end of June on slender 

 jointed pedicels ^'-\' long, in terminal flat puberulous many-flowered cymes l|^'-2^' 

 wide, mostly on lateral branchlets; calyx cup-shaped, obscurely toothed; corolla- 

 lobes narrow, oblong, rounded at the apex, |' long, reflexed after anthesis; style 

 enlarged into a prominent stigma. Fruit in loose spreading red-stemmed clusters, 

 ripening in October, subglobose, dark blue-black, |' in diameter, tipped with the 



