Addisonia 61 



(Plate 151) 



LEUCOTHOE CATESBAEI 

 Dog-laurel 



Native of the southern Appalachians and adjacent highlands 



Family Ericaceae Heath Family 



Andromeda Catesbaei Walt. Fl. Car. 137. 1788. 

 Leucothoe Catesbaei A. Gray, Man. ed. 2. 252. 1856. 



An evergreen shrub two yards tall or less, with glabrous or spar- 

 ingly fine-pubescent twigs. The stems and branches are pliable, 

 often switch-like, recurved or reclining, leafy, smooth, and some- 

 times slightly zigzag. The persistent leaves are alternate and more 

 or less distichously spreading. The blades are leathery, lanceolate 

 to narrowly elliptic, tw^o and a half to six inches long, serrate with 

 spine-tipped teeth, acuminate at the apex, and acute to rounded 

 at the base; they are dark-green, with impressed veins, and ulti- 

 mately glabrous above, but pale, with raised veins, and permanently 

 pubescent with scattered hairs beneath. The petioles are stout, 

 about half an inch long or less, closely fine-pubescent on the upper 

 side, with buds for the next season early developed in their axils. 

 The nodding, sessile panicles are raceme-like, narrow, one and one 

 half to three and one half inches long, and densely flowered. The 

 rachis of the- panicle is stout, and is minutely and closely pubescent, 

 at least in anthesis. The flower-stalks are over an eighth of an 

 inch long, each subtended by an ovate-reniform bract, which is 

 glandular-ciliate with black hairs and about an eighth of an inch 

 long. The two bractlets at the base of the flower-stalk are similar 

 to the bract, but smaller and thinner. The five-lobed calyx is 

 persistent; the lobes are lanceolate to ovate, obtuse or acute, about 

 one tenth of an inch long, eciliate, and several-veined. The corolla 

 is white or pinkish, urceolate, about a quarter of an inch long, with 

 ovate to reniform, recurved short lobes. The ten erect stamens 

 are included in the corolla and are usually about one half as long 

 as its tube. The subulate-lanceolate filaments, alternately long 

 and short, are one sixteenth to a tenth of an inch long, glabrous, 

 and unappendaged. The ellipsoid anthers, about one sixteenth of 

 an inch long, are attached to the filament about the middle of the 

 back, awnless but bimucronate at the apex where the sacs are open 

 to shed the pollen, and rounded at the base. The ovary is globose 

 or depressed, five-lobed, five-celled, and glabrous. The columnar 

 style is several times longer than the ovary, glabrous, and straight, 

 with the stigma discoid, but only slightly wider than the diameter 

 of the style. The capsule is depressed-globose, about one fifth of 

 an inch wide, seated in the persistent calyx, and glabrous, each 

 valve with a median channel. The minute seeds are irregular in 

 size and shape, and granulose. 



