26 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
RUBIACER, 
CEPHALANTHUS OCCIDENTALIS. 
Button Bush. 
Catyx usually 4-lobed; corolla tubular funnel-form, usually glandular. 
Leaves 
ovate or lanceolate, acute or acuminate, membranaceous. 
Cephalanthus occidentalis, Linneus, Spec. 95 (1753). — 
Miller, Dict. ed. 8.— Du Roi, Harbk. Baumz. i. 145. — 
Wangenheim, Beschreib. Nordam. Holz. 140; Nordam. 
Holz. 101. — Lamarck, Dict. i. 678; Ill. i. 256, t. 59. — 
Castiglioni, Viag. negli Stati Uniti, ii. 222. — Marshall, 
Arbust. Am. 30.— Walter, Fl. Car. 84.— Schkuhr, Handb. 
i. 66, t. 21. — Willdenow, Berl. Bawmz. 58; Spee. i. pt. 
ii. 543; Hnum. 148. — Borkhausen, Handb. Forstbot. ii. 
1563. — Gertner, Fruct. ii. 41, t. 86, £. 7. — Michaux, FV. 
394, t.— Torrey, Fl. N. Y. i. 3138. — Dietrich, Syn. i. 
452. — Chapman, FJ. 176. — Curtis, Rep. Gleolog. Surv. N. 
Car. 1860, iii. 107. — K. Koch, Dendr. ii. 76. — Lauche, 
Deutsche Dendr. ed. 2, 185, £. 66.—Gray, Syn. FI. i. 
pt. ii. 29. — Dippel, Handb. Laubholzk. i. 163. — Watson 
& Coulter, Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 224. — Britton & Brown, 
Ill. Fl. iii. 216, £. 3403. — Mohr, Contrib. U. S. Nat. 
Herb. vi. 739 (Plant Life of Alabama). — Britton, Man. 
863. — Gattinger, FU. Tennessee, 155. 
Bor.-Am. i. 87.— Persoon, Syn. i. 119.— Du Mont de Cephalanthus oppositifolius, Moench. Meth. 487 (1794). 
Courset, Bot. Cult. ed. 2, iv. 330.— Desfontaines, Hist. Cephalanthus occidentalis, var. pubescens, Rafinesque, 
Arb. i. 331. — Pursh, FU. Am. Sept. i.114.— Bigelow, F1. Med. Fl. 101 (1828). 
Boston. 33. — Elliott, Sk. i. 186. — Nuttall, Gen. i. 92.— Cephalanthus occidentalis, var. macrophyllus, Rafi- 
Mordant de Launay, Herb. Amat. iv. 272, t. 272.— nesque, Med. FU. 101 (1828). 
Hayne, Dendr. Fl. 5,— Barton, Fl. Am. Sept. iii. 56, t. Cephalanthus occidentalis, var. obtusifolius, Rafi- 
91.— Sprengel, Syst..i. 877.— De Candolle, Prodr. iv. nesque, Med. F7. 102 (1828). 
538. — Hooker, #7. Bor.-Am. i. 288.— Darlington, Fl. Cephalanthus occidentalis, var. brachypodus, De Can- 
Cestr. 98. — Spach, Hist. Vég. viii. 463. — Torrey & Gray, dolle, Prodr. iii. 539 (1830). 
Fl. N. Am. ii. 31. — Emerson, Trees Mass. 349; ed. 2, ii. 
Usually a shrub only a few feet high, or very rarely arborescent at the north,’ Cephalanthus 
occidentalis m southern Arkansas and eastern Texas, on the margins of river-bottoms and swamps 
and in their pond holes, often attains a height of from forty to fifty feet with a straight tapering 
trunk a foot in diameter and frequently free of limbs for twenty feet, and ascending and spreading 
branches. The bark of large trunks is dark gray-brown or often nearly black and divided by deep 
The branchlets 
are stout, with a thick pith, and are glabrous, marked by large oblong pale lenticels, and developed 
mostly in verticils of threes from the axillary buds of one of the upper nodes, the end of the 
fissures into broad flat ridges broken on the surface into elongated narrow scales. 
branch dying back, at the north at least, in the autumn ;* they are light green when they first 
appear, pale reddish brown covered with a glaucous bloom during their first winter, when they are 
marked by the small semicircular leaf-scars, which show semilunate fibrovascular bundle-scars, and are 
connected by the stipule-scars or by the persistent black stipules; during the following season the 
branchlets become darker and dark brown in their third year, when the fissures usually appear and the 
bark begins to separate into the large loose scales which are found on the large branches and on 
the stems of small plants. The axillary buds are single or in pairs or in threes one above the other, 
minute and nearly immersed in the bark. The leaves are ovate or lanceolate, acute, acuminate or 
short-pointed at the apex, rounded or cuneate at the base, membranaceous, dark green on the upper 
surface, paler and glabrous or puberulous on the lower surface, from four to seven inches long and from 
an inch to three inches and a half wide, with stout light yellow midribs, five or six pairs of slender 
1 Britton, Jour. N. Y. Bot. Gard. i. 54, £. 11. 
2 Foerste, Bull. Torrey Bot. Club, xx. 162; Bot. Gazette, xx. 79, t. 8, f. 1, c-g. 
