CAPRIFOLIACEZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 91 
SAMBUCUS GLAUCA. 
Elder. 
LEAVES and young shoots glabrous. Fruit covered with a glaucous bloom. 
Sambucus glauca, Nuttall, Torrey & Gray Fl. N. Am. ?Sambucus cerulea, Rafinesque, Alsograph. Am. 48 
ii. 13 (1841).— Walpers, Rep. ii. 453. — Torrey, Ives’ (1838). 
fep. 15; Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 71.— Watson, King’s Sambucus Mexicana, Newberry, Pacific R. R. Rep. vi. 
Rep. v. 134. — Gray, Brewer & Watson Bot. Cal. i. 278 pt. iii. 75 (1857) (not De Candolle). 
(in part); Syn. Fl. N. Am. i. pt. ii. 9. — Hall, Bot. Ga- Sambucus Californica, Koch, Dendy. ii. 72 (1872). 
zette, ii. 88. — Rothrock, Wheeler’s Rep. vi. 135, 363.— ? Sambucus callicarpa, Greene, Fl. Francis. 342 (1892). 
Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U.S. ix. 93. — 
Greene, Fl. Francis. 342. 
A tree, thirty to fifty feet in height, with a tall straight trunk sometimes enlarged at the base and 
twelve to eighteen inches in diameter, and stout spreading branches which form a compact round-topped 
head ; or often a broad shrub sending up from the ground a number of spreading stems. The bark of 
the trunk is deeply and irregularly fissured, the dark brown surface being slightly tinged with red and 
broken into small square appressed scales. The branches, when they first appear, are green tinged with 
red or brown,and are covered with short scattered white hairs which soon disappear ; in their first winter 
they are stout, slightly angled, covered with lustrous red-brown bark, and nearly encircled by the large 
triangular leaf-scars marked by five conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Terminal buds are rarely 
formed, owing to the premature death of the tips of the shoots, which continue to grow late in the 
autumn. The axillary buds are generally in pairs, superposed, or in clusters of four or five, only the 
upper bud or sometimes the lower usually developing; they are covered with two or three pairs of 
opposite broadly ovate chestnut-brown scales persistent on the base of the growing shoot until it is 
nearly a foot long; those of the inner rank are accrescent and at maturity are acute, entire, green, and 
an inch in length, or sometimes develop into pinnate leaves two or three inches long. The leaves are 
composed of from five to nine leaflets, and are borne on stout grooved petioles much enlarged and 
naked or sometimes furnished at the base with leaf-like appendages; the leaflets are ovate or narrowly 
oblong, contracted at the apex into long narrow points, unequally wedge-shaped or rounded at the base, 
and coarsely serrate with spreading or slightly incurved callous-tipped teeth; the lower ones are often 
three-parted or pinnate, and the terminal one is sometimes furnished with one or two lateral stalked 
leaflets ; when they unfold they are yellow-green on the upper, and pale on the lower surface, and, like 
the leaf-stalks, are covered with scattered pale hairs ; at maturity they are glabrous, thin, rather firm in 
texture, bright green above and pale below, two to six inches long, and half an inch to an inch and a 
half wide, with narrow pale midribs, inconspicuous veins, and slender petiolules which are a quarter of 
an inch to half an inch in length on the lateral leaflets and sometimes an inch and a half to two inches 
in length on the terminal leaflet. The stipels, which are often suppressed, vary from a sixteenth of an 
inch to half an inch in length, and are oblong-lanceolate, rounded or acute at the apex, entire and 
caducous. The flowers, which appear in April in southern California, and in June and July in Wash- 
ington and British Columbia, are produced in flat long-branched glabrous cymes four to six inches in 
width, with linear acute green caducous bracts and bractlets, the lower branches being often produced 
from the axils of upper leaves. The flower-buds are globose and covered with a glaucous bloom, and 
sometimes turn red before opening. The flowers, which are an eighth of an inch across, have an ovoid 
red-brown calyx with acute scarious lobes, a rotate yellowish white corolla with oblong divisions rounded 
at the apex and as long as the stamens, and a thick fleshy conical style. The fruit is subglobose, a 
