CORNACES. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
83 
NYSSA AQUATICA. 
Cotton Gum. 
Fruit large, the stone acutely ridged. 
Nyssa aquatica, Marshall, Arbust. Am. 96 (1785). — Poiret, 
Lam. Dict. iv. 507. — Desfontaines, Hist. Arb. i. 36. 
Nyssa aquatica, Linnzus, Spec. 1058 (in part) (1753). 
Nyssa uniflora, Wangenheim, Nordam. Holz. 83, t. 27, £. 57 
(1787). — Walter, FZ. Car. 253. — Elliott, Sk. ii. 686. — 
Chapman, F7. 168.— Curtis, Rep. Geolog. Surv. N. Car. 
1860, iii. 62. — Koch, Dendr. ii. 455. — Lauche, Deutsche 
Dendr. ed. 2, 543. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th 
Census U. S. ix. 92. — Coulter & Evans, Bot. Gazette, xv. 
92. — Watson & Coulter, Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 215. 
Nyssa denticulata, Aiton, Hort. Kew. iii. 446 (1789). — 
Persoon, Syn. ii. 615.— Willdenow, Spec. iv. 1114. — 
Gertner f. Fruct. iii. 203, t. 216. — Pursh, FZ. Am. Sept. 
i. 178.— Poiret, Lam. Dict. Suppl. iv. 115. — Nuttall, 
Gen. ii. 236.— Hayne, Dendr. Fl. 229. — Roemer & 
Schultes, Syst. v. 577. — Sprengel, Syst. i. 832. — Die- 
Tupelo Gum. 
Leaves oval or oblong, acute or acuminate. 
Nyssa palustris, Salisbury, Prodr. 175 (1796). 
Nyssa angulosa, Poiret, Zam. Dict. iv. 507 (1797); Ill. 
ili. 442, t. 851, f. 2. — Roemer & Schultes, Syst. v. 578. 
Nyssa tomentosa, Michaux, Fl. Bor.-Am. ii. 259 
(1803).— Persoon, Syn. ii. 615. — Willdenow, Spec. iv. 
1113. — Pursh, 7. Am. Sept. i. 177. — Nuttall, Gen. ii. 
236. — Roemer & Schultes, Syst. v. 577. — Elliott, Sk. 
ii. 685. — Sprengel, Syst. i. 832.— Audubon, Birds, t. 
13. — Dietrich, Syn. i. 879. 
Nyssa angulisans, Michaux, FU. Bor.-Am. ii. 259 (1803). — 
Dietrich, Syn. i. 879. — Spach, Hist. Vég. x. 465. 
Nyssa grandidentata, Michaux f. Hist. Arb. Am. ii. 252, 
t. 19 (1812). — Loudon, Ard. Brit. iii. 1319, f. 1200, 
1201. 
Nyssa candicans, var. grandidentata, D. J. Browne, 
Trees of America, 426 (1846). 
trich, Syn. i. 879. 
A tree, eighty to one hundred feet in height, with a trunk three or four feet in diameter above 
the greatly enlarged tapering base, comparatively small spreading branches which form a narrow oblong 
The bark of the trunk is a quarter 
of an inch thick, and is dark brown, longitudinally furrowed and roughened on the surface with small 
or pyramidal head, stout pithy branchlets, and thick corky roots. 
scales. The branches, when they first appear, are dark red and coated with fine pale tomentum ; they 
soon become glabrous or nearly so, and in their first winter are light or bright red-brown and marked 
by small scattered pale lenticels and by conspicuous elevated nearly orbicular leaf-scars which show the 
ends of three large fibro-vascular bundles. The terminal buds are nearly globose, and are covered with 
broad ovate light chestnut-brown scales keeled on the back and rounded and apiculate at the apex; the 
scales of the inner ranks lengthen on the growing shoots, and at maturity are ovate-oblong, or obovate- 
oblong rounded at the apex, an inch or more in length, and bright yellow. The axillary buds are minute, 
obtuse, and nearly imbedded in the bark. The leaves are ovate-oblong, acute or acuminate and often 
long-pointed at the apex, wedge-shaped, rounded or subcordate at the base, entire or remotely and irregu- 
larly angulate-toothed, the teeth being often tipped with long slender mucros, and deciduous ; when 
they unfold they are light red, coated below and on the petioles with thick pale tomentum, and pubes- 
cent above, especially on the midribs, and at maturity are thick and firm, dark green and lustrous on the 
upper surface, pale and more or less downy-pubescent on the lower, five to seven inches long and two 
to four inches wide, with broad thick midribs, about ten or twelve pairs of primary veins forked near 
the margin and connected by conspicuous cross veins, and stout grooved hairy petioles enlarged at the 
base and an inch and a half to two inches and a half in length. The flowers, which appear in March 
and April, are yellow-green and are borne on long slender hairy peduncles produced in the axils of 
the inner scales of the terminal bud, the sterile in dense capitate clusters, their peduncles furnished near 
the middle or occasionally at the apex with long linear ciliate bractlets, and the fertile solitary and 
surrounded by two to four strap-shaped scarious ciliate bractlets often half an inch in length and more 
