50 CHLORIS BOREALI-AMERICANA. 



ciniiim d'Ours " ; but it is not described in his Flora.* The Rev. 

 Mr. Curtis detected it, in the fruiting state, in the summer of 1839 ; 

 and Mr. Buckley gathered the flowers in the spring of 1842. The 

 next autumn I found it on the wooded summit of Table Rock in 

 South Carolina, as well as elsewhere, and obtained living plants for 

 cultivation in the Botanic Garden. Here it has blossomed, though 

 sparingly, every spring, although it fails to ripen fruit. The shrub 

 is only two or three feet high ; the flowers are inconspicuous ; and 

 the fruit, though edible, and indeed not unpleasant when fully ripe 

 (in September and October), has not the fine flavor of the other 

 species, and is seldom eaten, except by the bears. 

 " This plant, with the allied species, G, resinosa, frondosa, and 

 dumosa (the true Huckleberries, as distinguished from the Blue- 

 berries of our markets), must be separated from Vaccinium, on ac- 

 count of their remarkable ten-celled ovaries, and drupaceous ten- 

 seeded fruit. It is surprising that such an obvious peculiarity in 

 some of our commonest summer fruits should have been so gener- 

 ally overlooked. Among the earlier writers, the only notices I can 

 discover which point towards the true structure of the fruit are, 

 that Wangenheim describes and figures his Andromeda baccata 

 (which is Gaylussacia resinosa) as ten-seeded ; f and Clayton de- 

 scribes another species as eight-celled, " with few osseous seeds." J 

 Muhlenberg, also, in his manuscript Florida Lancastriensis, ex- 

 pressly describes Vaccinium resinosum and V. frondosum as ten- 

 seeded. Quite recently, when elaborating the Vacciniece for De 

 CandoUe's Prodronms, the learned Professor Dunal noticed some 



* This manuscript journal was presented, by the younger Michaux, to the Amer- 

 ican Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, where it is preserved. 



+ Anpjlanzung Nordamericanischer Holzarten, p. Ill, t. 30, f. 69. 

 I Flora Virginica, ed. 2, p. 59. 



