SASSAFRAS-TREE. 417 



most numerous, have regularly three lobes."^ It has been further remarked, 

 that the lobed leaves are the most numerous on the upper part of the tree. The 

 flowers, which put forth before the leaves, usually appear iu Carolhia and Geor- 

 gia, from the middle to the last of March ; but in the vicinity of Philadelphia and 

 New York, not before the beginning of May. They are disposed in short, slen- 

 der racemes, of a pale-green colour, and protrude from the sides of the branches 

 below the leaves, having the scales of the former bud for their tloral leaves. In 

 this species, as with the Laurus nobilis, the sexes are confined to different trees. 

 The fruit, or seeds, is of an oval form, of a deep-blue colour, and is contained in 

 small, bright-red cups, supported by peduncles from one to two inches in length. 

 These seeds, when ripe, are eagerly devoured by birds, and soon disappear from 

 the tree. 



Varieties. Nuttall states in his " Genera of North American Plants," that the 

 mhabitants of Carolina distinguish two kinds of sassafras, the " Red," and the 

 "White," calling the latter, also, the "Smooth." The red variety he identifies 

 with his sub-genus Euosmus ; and the white or smooth kind, he considers as 

 belonging to the same sub-genus, which he calls Laurus Euosmus alhida, and 

 of which he has adduced the following characteristics : Its buds and young 

 branches are smooth and glaucous; its leaves are everywhere glabrous and thin, 

 and the veins are obsolete on the under surface; the petiole is longer. The root 

 is much more strongly camphorated than the root of the red sort, and is nearly 

 white. This kind, he says, is better calculated to answer as a substitute for 

 ochra, (Hibiscus esculentus,) from its buds and young branches being much 

 more mucilaginous. It is abundant in North and South Carolina, from the Ca- 

 tawba Mountains to the east bank of the Santee, growing with the red variety, 

 which, in North Carolina, is less abundant. 



Geography and Histoi-y. The Laurus sassafras is said to be indigenous to 

 every section of the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains, and to Upper 

 Canada, where, in the last-named country, it is found between Niagara and 

 Hamilton, in forty-three and a half degrees of north latitude; but there it dwiiv- 

 dles down to a tall shrub, though healthy in its appearance, not exceeding twenty 

 feet in height. In the neighbourhood of New York and Philadelphia, however, 

 it grows to a height of forty or fifty feet, and attains a still greater elevation in 

 the southern states. Indeed, it abounds from the state of New Hampshire to the 

 banks of the Mississippi, and from the shores of the Atlantic, in Virginia, to the 

 remotest wilds of Missouri, comprising an extent in one direction, of more than a 

 thousand miles, and more than double that distance in the other direction. 



The sassafras, from the peculiar forms of its foliage, and the properties of its 

 bark, wood, and leaves, is rendered a prominent object of notice, and it appears 

 to have been one of the earliest trees of the North American forests to attract the 

 attention of Europeans. Monardez, iu 1549, and after him Clusius, treat of its 

 uses. Gerard calls it the "ague-tree," and says that a decoction of its bark will 

 cure agues and other diseases. And Bigelow states that, "Its character, as an 

 article of medicine, was at one time so high, that it commanded an extravagant 

 price, and treatises were written to celebrate its virtues." " It still retains a 

 place," he adds, "in the best European pharmacopoeias." The most interesting 

 historical recollection connected with this tree is, that it may be said to have led 

 to the discovery of America ; as it was its strong fragrance, smelt by (^dlumbus, 

 that encouraged him to persevere when his crew were in a state of nnitiny ; and 

 enabled him to convince them that land was nigh. 



The largest recorded tree of this species, in TJiitain. is at Syon, which is forty- 

 six feet in height, with a trunk three feet in diameter, and an ambitus or spread 

 of branches of thirty-four feel. There is another tree at CoMiam Hall, in Kent, 



* Bigelow. Medic %1 Botany, p. 144. 



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