CAPRIFOLIACE^ 



809 



coated on both surfaces of the midribs and on the petioles with thick rufous pubes- 

 cence, slightly pilose on the upper surface and covered on the lower with short pale 

 hairs, and at maturity bright green and lustrous above, yellow-green and marked by 

 minute black dots below, 2i'-3' long and I'-l^' wide, with slender midribs and primary 

 veins connected by conspicuous reticulate veinlets, turning in the autumn before falling 

 deep orange-red or red and orange color; their petioles broad,* grooved, more or less 

 interruptedly winged or occasionally wingless, I'-l^' long, those of the first pair of 

 leaves covered with thick rufous tomentum. Flowers about ^' in diameter, slightly 

 fragrant, appearing from the middle of April to the 1st of June in stout-branched 

 scurfy flat cymes 3'-5' in diameter, with nearly triangular green caducous bracts and 

 bractlets about ^^g' in length; calyx-tube slender, ovoid, with minute triangular acute 

 lobes; corolla pale cream color or nearly white, with ovate lobes acute and slightly 

 erose at the apex; style thick, light green, crowned with a broad stigma. Fruit 



ripening in September on slender drooping stalks, in red-stemmed few-fruited clus- 

 ters, oval, thick-skinned, sweet and rather juicy, black or dark blue, and covered 

 with a glaucous bloom ; stone about ^' long and y^' wide. 



A bushy tree, 20-30 high, with a short trunk 8'-10' in diameter, slender rather 

 pendulous branches forming a compact round-topped head, and thin divergent 

 branchlets light green, slightly covered with rufous pubescence at first, and in their 

 first winter light red, scurfy, marked by occasional dark orange-colored lenticels and 

 by narrow leaf-scars displaying 3 conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars, becoming 

 in their second year dark reddish brown and sometimes covered with a glaucous 

 bloom. Winter-buds light red, generally covered with pale scurfy pubescence, 

 those containing flower-bearing branchlets |' in length, obovate, swollen below the 

 middle and then abruptly contracted into long narrow tapering points, and subtended 

 by 2 minute lateral generally abortive buds formed in the axils of the last leaves of 

 the previous year, the buds inclosing sterile shoots lanceolate, acute, slightly angled, 

 about Y lorigj axillary buds acute, flattened by pressure against the stem, and much 

 smaller than the terminal buds. Bark of the trunk reddish brown and irregularly 

 broken into small thick plates divided on their surface into minute thin appressed 

 scales. "Wood bad-smelling, heavy, hard, close-grained, dark orange-brown, with 

 thin nearly white sapwood. *" 



