724 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 







persistent style, ^^g' in diameter, and covered with viscid hairs, remaining on the 

 branches until the following year; seeds oblong, light brown, scattered by the 

 opening of the valves. 



A tree, rarely 30-40 high, with a short crooked and contorted trunk sometimes 

 18'-20' in diameter, stout forked divergent branches forming a round-topped com- 

 pact head, and slender branchlets light green tinged with red and covered with soft 

 white glandular-viscid hairs when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous, and in 

 their first winter green tinged with red and very lustrous, turning bright red-brown 

 during their second year and paler the following season, the bark then separating 

 into large thin papery scales exposing the cinnamon-red inner bark, and marked with 

 large deeply impressed leaf-scars showing near the centre a crowded cluster of 

 fibro-vascular bundle-scars; more often a dense broad shrub 6-10 high, with 

 numerous crooked stems. Winter-buds formed before midsummer in the axils 

 of the leaves just below those producing the inflorescence-buds, their inner scales ac- 

 crescent, and at maturity often 1' long and ^' wide, ovate, acute, light green, covered 

 with glandular white hairs, and in falling marking the base of the shoots with con- 

 spicuous broad scars. Bark of the trunk hardly more than ^Ig' thick, dark brown 

 tinged with red, and divided by longitudinal furrows into narrow ridges separating 

 into long narrow scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, rather brittle, close-grained, 

 brown tinged with red, with slightly lighter colored sap wood; used for the handles 

 of tools, in turnery, and for fuel. 



Distribution. New Brunswick to the northern shores of Lake Erie and south- 

 ward generally in the neighborhood of the Appalachian Mountains to western Flor- 

 ida, and through the Gulf states to western Louisiana and the valley of the Red 

 River, Arkansas; often growing in low moist ground near the margins of swamps 

 or on dry slopes under the shade of deciduous-leaved trees, or on rich rocky hill- 

 sides; most abundant and often forming dense impenetrable thickets on the southern 

 Appalachian Mountains up to elevations of 3000-4000 above the level of the sea; 

 usually shrubby, and only arborescent in a few secluded valleys between the Blue 

 Ridge and the Alleghany Mountains of North and South Carolina. 



Often cultivated as an ornament of parks and gardens in the eastern states, and in 

 Europe. 



4. OXYDENDRUM, DC. 



A tree, with thick deeply furrowed bark, slender terete glabrous light red or brown 

 branchlets without terminal buds, marked by elevated nearly triangular leaf-scars 

 displaying a lunate row of crowded fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and numerous ele- 

 vated oblong dark lenticels, acid foliage, and fibrous roots. Winter-buds axillary, 

 minute, partly immersed in the bark, obtuse, covered with opposite broadly ovate 

 dark red scales rounded at the apex, those of the inner ranks accrescent. Leaves 

 alternate, revolute in the bud, oblong or lanceolate, acute, gradually contracted at 

 the base into long slender petioles, serrate, with minute incurved callous teeth, penni- 

 veined, with conspicuous bright yellow midribs and reticulate veinlets, thin and firm, 

 dark green and lustrous on the upper, pale and glaucous on the lower surface, gla- 

 brous or at first slightly puberulous, deciduous. Flowers on clavate erect pedicels 

 coated with hoary pubescence and bibracteolate above the middle, with linear acute 

 caducous bractlets, in puberulous panicles of secund racemes appearing in summer 

 and terminal on axillary leading shoots of the year, the lower racemes in the axils of 

 upper leaves; calyx free, divided nearly to the base, the divisions valvate in the bud, 



