336 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



zontal rows of minute fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and stout spongy stoloniferous 

 roots covered by thick yellow bark. Flower-bearing buds terminal, ovate, acute, 

 with 9 or 10 imbricated scales increasing in size from without inward, the 3 outer 

 scales ovate, rounded, often apiculate at the apex, keeled and thickened on the back, 

 pale yellow-green below, dull yellow-brown above the middle, loosely imbricated, 

 slightly or not at all accrescent, deciduous at the opening of the bud, much smaller 

 than the thin accrescent light yellow-green scales of the next rows turning dull red 

 before falling, and obovate, rounded at the apex, cuneate below, concave, coated on 

 the outer surface with soft silky pubescence, glabrous or lustrous on the inner sur- 

 face, reflexed, |' long, nearly ^' broad, tardily deciduous, the 2 inner scales folia- 

 ceous, lanceolate-acute, light green, coated on the outer surface with delicate pale 

 hairs, glabrous on the inner surface, infolding the leaves; sterile and axillary buds 

 much smaller. Leaves involute in the bud, ovate or obovate, entire or often 1-3- 

 lobed at the apex, the lobes broadly ovate, acute, divided by deep broad sinuses, 

 gradually narrowed at the base into elongated slender petioles, feather-veined, with 

 alternate veins arcuate and united or running to the points of the lobes, the lowest 

 parallel with the margins, conspicuously reticulate-venulose, mucilaginous, deciduous, 

 as they unfold light green and somewhat pilose above, with scattered white hairs, 

 ciliate, clothed below with a loose pubescence of long lustrous white hairs, at ma- 

 turity membranaceous, dark dull green above, pale and glabrous or pubescent below. 

 Flowers opening in early spring with the first unfolding of the leaves, the males and 

 females usually on different individuals, in lax drooping few-flowered racemes in the 

 axils of large obovate bud-scales, their pedicles slender, rarely forked and 2-flowered, 

 without bracts, pilose, from the axils of linear acute scarious hairy deciduous bracts, 

 or that of the terminal flower often without bracts; calyx pale yellow-green, divided 

 nearly to the base into narrow obovate concave lobes spreading or reflexed after 

 anthesis, those of the inner row a little larger than the others; stamens 9, inserted 

 in 3 series on the somewhat thickened margin of the shallow concave calyx-tube, 

 those of the outer series opposite its outer lobes; filaments flattened, elongated, 

 light yellow, those of the inner series furnished at the base with 2 conspicuous 

 orange-colored stipitate glands rounded on the back, obscurely lobed on the inner 

 face; anthers oblong, flattened, truncate or slightly emarginate at the apex, rounded 

 or wedge-shaped at the base, orange-colored, introrse, in the female flower reduced 

 to flattened ovate pointed or slightly 2-lobed dark orange-colored stipitate stami- 

 nodia, or occasionally fertile and similar to or a little smaller than those of the 

 staminate flower; ovary ovate, light green, glabrous, nearly sessile in the short tube 

 of the calyx, narrowed into an elongated simple style gradually enlarged above into 

 a capitate oblique obscurely lobed stigma. Fruit an oblong dark blue lustrous berry 

 surrounded at the base by the enlarged and thickened obscurely 6-lobed or truncate 

 scarlet limb of the calyx, raised on a much elongated scarlet stalk thickened above 

 the middle; pericarp thin and fleshy. Seed oblong, pointed, light brown; testa thin, 

 membranaceous, barely separable into 2 coats, the inner coat much thinner than the 

 outer, dark chestnut-brown, and lustrous. 



Sassafras is confined to temperate eastern North America and to China, where a 

 species, not now distinguishable from the American tree but still imperfectly known, 

 has recently been discovered. 



Sassafras was first used as a popular name for this tree by the French in Florida. 



