SYMPLOCACE^ 



753 



branches until after the opening of the flowers the following spring; their petioles 

 stout, slightly winged, ^' ^' long. Flowers : flower-clusters inclosed in the bud by 

 ovate acute orange-colored scales brown and ciliate on the margins, each of the 

 flower-buds surrounded by 3 imbricated oblong bracts rounded or pointed at the apex 

 and ciliate on the margins, the longest as long as the calyx and one third longer than 

 the 2 lateral bracts; flowers fragrant, opening from the 1st of March at the south 

 to the middle of May on the southern Appalachian Mountains, on short pedicels 

 enlarged into thick hemispherical receptacles covered with long white hairs, in 



nearly sessile many-flowered clusters in the axils of leaves of the previous year; 

 calyx oblong, cup-shaped, dark green and puberulous, with minute ovate scarious 

 lobes rounded at the apex; corolla creamy white, ^' long, with rounded lobes; stamens 

 exserted, with slender filaments united at the base into 5 clusters, and orange-colored 

 anthers; ovary 3-celled, furnished on the top with 5 dark nectariferous glands placed 

 opposite the lobes of the calyx, and abruptly contracted into a slender style grad- 

 ually thickened toward the apex and longer than the corolla. Fruit ripening in the 

 summer or early autumn, ovate, y long, dark orange-colored or brown; seed ovate, 

 pointed, with a thin papery chestnut-brown coat. 



A tree, occasionally 30-35 high, with a short trunk barely exceeding 6'-8' in 

 diameter, slender upright branches forming an open head, and stout terete pithy 

 branchlets light green and coated with pale or rufous tomentum when they first 

 appear, or sometimes glabrous and covered with scattered white hairs, reddish brown 

 to ashy gray, tinged with red and usually more or less pubescent or often covered 

 with a glaucous bloom during their first and second years, later growing darker, 

 roughened by occasional small elevated lentieels and marked by the low horizontal 

 obcordate leaf-scars displaying a central cluster of large fibro-vascular bundle-scars; 

 or more often a shrub. Winter-buds ovate, acute, covered with broadly ovate 

 nearly triangular acute scales, those of the inner rows accrescent on the young 

 branchlets, and at maturity oblong-obovate, rounded and often apiculate at the apex, 

 light green, glabrous or pilose, ciliate on the margins, and often ^' in length. Bark 

 of the trunk y ^' thick, ashy gray slightly tinged with red, divided by occasional 

 narrow fissures and roughened by wart-like excrescences. "Wood light, soft, close- 

 grained, light red or brown, with thick lighter colored often nearly white sapwood of 



