N. ORD.-ROSACEZE. 
S. Ord.—POMEA., 
GENUS.—PIRUS,* LINN. 
SEX. SYST.—POLYANDRIA TRIGYNIA. 
PIRUS. 
AMERICAN MOUNTAIN ASH. 
SYN.—PIRUS (PYRUS) AMERICANA, D. C.; P. ACUPARIA, MEYER; SORBUS 
- AMERICANA, WILLD.; S. ACUPARIA, VAR. AMERICANA, MICHX.; S. 
HUMIFUSA, RAF. 
COM. NAMES._AMERICAN MOUNTAIN ASH, AMERICAN SERVICE TREE; 
(FR.) SORBIS; (GER.) VOGELBEEREN. 
A TINCTURE OF THE FRESH BARK OF PIRUS AMERICANA, D. C. 
Description.—This nearly smooth tree grows to a height of from 10 to 35 
feet. Bark somewhat resembling the cherry. Leaf-buds pointed, glabrous and 
glutinous; deaves compound, odd-pinnate ; leaflets 13 to 15, lanceolate, taper- 
pointed, sharply serrate with pointed teeth, bright and shining green above, not 
pale below; ée¢h mucronate. /nflorescence in large, flattish, compound, terminal 
cymes. Cadyx with an urn-shaped tube; Zimé 5-cleft. Petals roundish obovate. 
Sfamens numerous. Styles 3, separate. Fruit a bright-scarlet, globose, baccate 
pome about the size of a pea; seeds two in each cell; /es¢a cartilaginous. 
’ History and Habitat.—This beautiful mountain tree is indigenous from Maine 
to Pennsylvania, westward to Michigan, and southward along the Alleghany 
Mountains, In the north it also habits swampy spots, and flowers in June. The 
large clusters of brilliant red berries of this species and the P: acuparia of Europe, 
which hang long after the leaves have fallen, make the trees fine lawn ornaments. 
The close botanical and chemical relation of the American and European 
species render them so closely allied that many botanists consider them identical, 
and the chemistry of the bark, so far as distinguished, is so much like that of the 
wild cherry (Cerasus serotina, D. C.) that its medical uses have been substitutive. 
The previous use of the bark in medicine has been as a tonic in fevers of 
* The classical name of the Pear tree. 
