Rare and Little Known Trees and Shrubs of Alabama. 217 



confined to extremely narrow limits, furnish in their strange and complete 

 isolation, further instances of the perplexities and difficulties surrounding 

 many of the questions in relation to the geographical distribution of plants, 

 and the consideration of which carries the mind far back to past periods in 

 the history of our globe, before the occurence of the glacial period, by whose 

 influences the features of the present flora of the temperate zones in the 

 northern hemisphere were shajted. 



The two last of the above named plants have, so far, not been observed 

 outside of the small district where they were first discovered. The Rhus Co- 

 tinoides was discovered by the botanist Nutall in the second decade of this 

 century in southwestern Arkansas. Shice that time no trace of it could be 

 found in that State. Prof. Buckley found it in the spring of 1842 on the 

 mountain side, bordering upon Flint river, in Madison county. For nearly 

 ■forty years this interesting tree was again lost to the botanists, until redis- 

 covered by the writer at the same locality in the fall of 1880. There it was 

 found growing on the ledges of limestone rock, which, at an altitude from 900 

 to 1000 feet above.the Gulf, are found cropping out beneath the strata of coal 

 bearing sandstones, to which it seems never to ascend. On the rocky soil of 

 the steep flanks of the mountains it delights in open situations a< well as in 

 the shade of the larger trees of the forest, the mountain oak, hickories and 

 •elms, associated with the undergrowth of blackhaws, the Southern privet, 

 wild plum, aromatic sumac and red cedars. It is a handsome tree, attaining 

 the height of thirty to thirty-five feet. The trunk, ten to twelve inches in 

 diameter, divides at a distance of from eight to ten feet above the ground, 

 with the primary limbs erect or slightly declining, spreading out into nu- 

 merous slender horizontal or ascending branches, which are covered with a 

 ■dense, rich foliage of a bright green, softened by a pleasing blnish hue. Sim- 

 ilar in its foliage and bloom to the closely related Rhus Cotinus, or smoke 

 tree of Europe, it possesses claims superior to those of that old favorite of 

 the cultivators for a place amongst the shrubbery of the garden and the park. 

 With the early days of spring it unfolds its broad, oval leaves at the same 

 time with the dense, elongated panicles of small, white flowers, alive with 

 the hum of countless insects attracted by their nectar. With the fading of the 

 flowers the panicles begin to expand, increasing rapidly in size until the be- 

 ginning of the maturity of its fruit. They rise far above the dense covering 

 of the foliage, and spread out into numerous threadlike, graceful branchlets, 

 clothed with long, silky hairs of a reddish-purple color. There is no other 

 object of the forest shining forth in all the freshness and loveliness of vernal 

 beauty which surpasses this tree at the time of the highest development of 

 its panicles, in the soft blending of the various shades of tender green ap- 

 pearing from a distance shrouded in the haze of a transparant, purplish 

 cloud of smoke. With the ripening of the small, bony, kidney-shaped fruit 

 the panicles begin to dry up, and its fragile branches soon breaking away 

 <are swept off" by the wind, leaving no trace of the flowering parts of the tree 



15 



