Vkrmont Shrubs and Woody Vines 149 



being abortive. The branches are greenish, profusely blotched 

 with purple and usually warty-dotted. The leaves are opposite, 

 broadly ovate and often nearly round, or sometimes even wider 

 than long, abruptly pointed, slightly downy above and pale and 

 densely soft-woolly below. It is a clean attractive shrub whether 

 ornamenting wayside thickets or for landscape planting. The 

 bark, like that of the preceding species, has sometimes been used 

 in medicine as a tonic. 



SILKY DOGWOOD. Comiis aiiionium Miller (C. sericea L.) 



This is also known as swamp dogwood in recognition of its 

 preference for a moist habitat, bordering damp woods and keep- 

 ing the button bush company along the streams. It occurs also 

 on higher ground. It is a branching shrub with stems somewhat 

 purplish, rising three to ten feet. Its name comes from the silky 

 down which typically clothes the young twigs and lower leaf 

 surfaces. The berries, when mature, are about one-fourth inch 

 in diameter and of a pale blue hue. The bark has sometimes been 

 used in medicine as a tonic in the same way as has that of the 

 two preceding species. The Indians so employed it. They also 

 made a black dye from the bark and a scarlet one from the root- 

 lets. Kinnikinnik is the aboriginal name for a favorite smoking 

 mixture of the Indians, consisting of tobacco and the scrapings of 

 the wood of the silky dogwood, a name which has been given 

 a permanent place in geography as the name of a Wisconsin 

 town. 



RED-osiER DOGWOOD. Corfiiis stolouifera Michx. 



The red-osier dogwood is a spreading shrub from four to 

 eight feet high, usually with the lower parts of the stem prostrate 

 and soon rooting to form clumps of indefinite expanse. This 

 creeping habit of the stems gave it its Latin name. The slender 



