722 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



seeds oblong, flattened, the coat prolonged at the ends into scarious fringed ap- 

 pendages. 



A bushy tree, 30-40 high, with a short crooked often prostrate trunk occasionally 

 10'-12' in diameter, stout contorted branches forming a round head, and branchlets 

 green tinged with red and covered with dark red or slightly ferrugineous gland- 

 ular-hispid hairs when they first appear, dark green and glabrous in their first winter, 

 gradually turning bright red-brown in their second year, and ultimately gray tinged 

 with red, the thin bark separating on branches four or five years old into persistent 

 scales; more often a broad shrub, with many divergent twisted stems 10-12 

 high. Winter-buds: leaf-buds conical, dark green, axillary, or terminal on barren 

 shoots, with many closely imbricated scales; those of the inner ranks accrescent, 

 increasing in length from the outer to the inner, and at maturity 1^' long, Y wide, 

 gradually narrowed at the base, and terminating at the apex in a long slender 

 point, light green, glabrous, closely held against the shoot by a resinous exudation 

 from the glandular hairs, and in falling marking the branchlet with numerous con- 

 spicuous narrow remote scars persistent for three or four years. Bark of the trunk 

 about Y^g' thick, light red-brown, broken on the surface into small thin appressed 

 scales. Wood heavy,<hard, strong, rather brittle, close-grained, light clear brown, 

 with thin lighter colored sap wood ; occasionally made into the handles of tools and 

 used as a substitute for boxwood in engraving. A decoction of the leaves is occa- 

 sionally employed in domestic practice in the treatment of rheumatism. 



Distribution. Nova Scotia to the northern shores of Lake Erie, and southward 

 through New York and New England, and along the Appalachian Mountains to 

 northern Georgia; rare at the north and an inhabitant of deep cold swamps in a few 

 isolated stations; more abundant on the mountains of western Pennsylvania, becom- 

 ing exceedingly common farther south and occupying the steep banks of streams up 

 to elevations of 3000 above the sea; of its largest size on the high mountains of 

 eastern Tennessee and the Carolinas, and here often forming thickets hundreds 

 of acres in extent. 



Often cultivated as an ornament of parks and gardens in the United States, and 

 in Europe, and one of the parents of a number of distinct and beautiful hybrids. 



3. KALMIA, L. 



Trees or shrubs, with scaly bark, terete branchlets without terminal buds, minute 

 axillary leaf-buds, elongated axillary inflorescence-buds covered by imbricated scales, 

 and fibrous roots. Leaves ovate-oblong or linear, short-petiolate, with flat entire mar- 

 gins, coriaceous, persistent. Flowers on slender pedicels bibracteolate at the base, 

 from the axils of foliaceous coriaceous ovate or acute persistent bracts, in axillary 

 umbels; calyx 5-parted, the divisions imbricated in the bud, persistent under the 

 fruit; corolla 5-lobed, rose-colored, purple, or white, saucer-shaped, with a short 

 tube and 10 pouches just below the 5-parted limb, the lobes ovate, acute, before 

 anthesis prominently lO-ribbed from the pouches to the acute apex of the bud, 

 the salient keels of the ribs running to the points of the lobes and to the sinuses; 

 stamens 10, shorter than the corolla; filaments filiform ; anthers oblong, each 

 cell opening by a short apical oblong longitudinal pore, at first free in the bud, 

 the filaments then erect, later received in the pouches of the corolla, the filaments 

 becoming bent back by its enlargement and expansion, straightening elastically and 

 incurving on the release of the anthers, and in straightening discharging the pol- 

 len-grains; disk prominently 10-lobed; ovary subglobose, 5-celled; style filiform. 



