76 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. CORNACEX. 
terete or wing-margined ciliate petioles which vary from a quarter of an inch to an inch and a half in 
length, and are often bright red. In the autumn they turn bright scarlet on the upper surface only. 
The flowers, which are yellowish green, appear when the leaves are about one third grown, from April 
in Florida to the middle of June in northern New England; they are borne on slender pubescent or 
tomentose peduncles half an inch to an inch and a half in length, often on the stammate plant furnished 
near the middle with two minute deciduous bractlets, or ebracteolate, the males in many-flowered dense 
or lax compound heads, the females in two to several-flowered clusters and sessile in the axil of a 
conspicuous often foliaceous bract and furnished with two smaller acute hairy bractlets. The calyx is 
oblong and slightly urceolate with a minutely five-toothed limb ; the petals are thick, ovate-oblong, 
acute, rounded at the apex, erect or slightly spreading, and early deciduous; the stamens are exserted 
in the sterile flower, and in the fertile flower are shorter than the petals or are sometimes wanting ; the 
stigma, of which there is no trace in the sterile flower, is stout, exserted, and reflexed above the middle. 
One to three fruits develop from a flower-cluster and ripen in October ; they are ovoid, from a third to 
two thirds of an inch long, and dark blue, with thin and acid flesh ; the stone is light brown, ovoid, 
pointed at the two ends, terete or more or less flattened, and ten or twelve-ribbed, with narrow distinct 
pale ribs rounded on the back, and thick hard walls. The seed is oblong, and is covered by a thin pale 
membranaceous coat. 
Nyssa sylvatica is distributed from the valley of the Kennebec River in Maine to southern 
Ontario,’ central Michigan, and southeastern Missouri,’ and southward to the shores of the Kissimmee 
River and Tampa Bay in Florida, and to the valley of the Brazos River in Texas. In a large part of 
the region which it inhabits the Tupelo generally frequents the borders of swamps, growing in wet 
imperfectly drained soil in company with the Elm, the Swamp White Oak, the Scarlet Maple, the 
Hornbeam, and other water-loving trees; but in all the Alleghany region, where in North and South 
Carolina and Tennessee it attains its largest size, it is found on high wooded slopes associated with the 
White Oak, the Tulip-tree, the Cucumber-tree, the Buckeye, the Ash, the Sugar Maple, the Hickories, 
the Black Walnut, and the Wild Cherry. 
The wood of Nyssa sylvatica is heavy, soft, strong, very tough, hard to split, difficult to work, 
inclined to check unless carefully seasoned, and not durable in contact with the soil ; it is light yellow 
or nearly white, with thick lighter colored sapwood composed of eighty to a hundred layers of annual 
growth, and contains many thin medullary rays and numerous regularly distributed small open ducts. 
The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.6353, a cubic foot weighing 39.59 pounds. It is 
employed for the hubs of wheels, rollers in glass factories, ox-yokes, shoes used to support horses on 
the rice-fields of the southern states, wharf-piles on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and sometimes for 
the soles of shoes.’ 
In the south Atlantic states, where the Tupelo often occupies small ponds in the Pine barrens, a 
well-marked variety occurs.’ This is a tree thirty to forty feet in height, with a trunk gradually 
tapering upward from a swollen and much enlarged base, many erect thick roots rismg above the 
1 Bell, Rep. Geolog. Surv. Can. 1879-80, 55°.— Burgess, Bot. 
Gazette, vii. 95.— Mocoun, Cat. Can. Pl. i. 192. 
2 Broadhead, Bot. Gazette, iii. 53. 
Nyssa biflora, Walter, Fl. Car. 253 (1788). — Poiret, Lam. Dict. 
iv. 508. — Michaux, Fl. Bor.-Am. ii. 259. — Willdenow, Spec. iv. 
1113 (in part) ; Enum. 1061 ; Berl. Baumz. ed. 2, 256. — Desfon- 
3 Porcher, Resources of Southern Fields and Forests, 347. 
4 Nyssa sylvatica, var. biflora. 
Nyssa aquatica, Linneus, Spec. 1058 (in part) (1753). — Wan- 
genheim, Beschreib. Nordam. Holz. 86 (in part).— St. Hilaire, 
Fam. Nat. ii. 152.— Persoon, Syn. ii. 614. — Michaux f. Hist. 
Arb. Am. ii. 165, t. 22.— Roemer & Schultes, Syst. v. 76 (in 
taines, Hist. Arb. i. 37. —Gertner f. Fruct. iii. 202, t. 216.— 
Aiton, Hort. Kew. ed. 2, v. 479. — Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. i. 177. — 
Nuttall, Gen. ii. 236.— Poiret, Lam. Dict. Suppl. iv. 115.— 
Hayne, Dendr. Fl. 229.— Loudon, Arb. Brit. iii. 1817, f. 1195, 
1196.— Coulter & Evans, Bot. Gazette, xv. 92. 
This aquatic tree often appears distinct enough from the northern 
part). — W. P. C. Barton, Compend. Fl. Phil. ii. 192. — Sprengel, 
Syst. i. 832. — Audubon, Birds, t. 133.— Elliott, Sk. ii. 684. — 
Dietrich, Syn. i. 878.— Spach, Hist. Vég. x. 464. — Chapman, 
Fl. 168. — Curtis, Rep. Geolog. Surv. N. Car. 1860, iii. 62. 
Tupelo, but the extreme forms are connected by others intermedi- 
ate between the two in the shape and size of their leaves and in the 
shape and ridges of their stones. 
