100 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. CAPRIFOLIACES. 
are one to three inches long, half an inch to three inches wide, and are borne on short grooved petioles 
which are one half to two thirds of an inch in length, often clothed throughout the season with rufous 
tomentum, and broad and boat-shaped on the first pair of leaves,and on vigorous shoots often narrowly 
wing-margined. In the autumn the leaves turn a brilliant scarlet or a dark vinous red before falling. 
The flowers, which open from the middle of March in Texas to the middle of May at the north, are 
produced in glabrous, glandular, or tomentose cymes two to four inches in diameter, and are borne on 
slender pedicels bibracteolate at the apex. The bracts and bractlets are subulate, a sixteenth of an 
inch long or less, usually red above the middle, and caducous. The calyx is narrowly ovate, with short 
rounded lobes often tipped with pink ; the corolla is pure white and a quarter of an inch across when 
expanded, with oval or nearly orbicular lobes ; the stamens are exserted, with slender filaments and pale 
yellow anthers, and the style is thick, conical, light green, and terminated by a broad stigma. The 
fruit is oval or slightly obovate, half an inch long, dark blue, and covered with a handsome glaucous 
bloom. It ripens in October, and is produced in few-fruited clusters with red stems marked by elevated 
lenticels. Hanging on the branches until the beginning of winter, it does not become sweet and edible 
until after it has been touched by frost. 
Viburnum prunifolium is distributed from Fairfield County, Connecticut, and the valley of the 
lower Hudson River to Hernando County, Florida, the valley of the Guadaloupe River in Texas,’ and 
to Missouri, Arkansas, and the Indian Territory. It is exceedingly common in the middle and southern 
states, especially in the neighborhood of the coast; at the north it is usually found in rich coppices on 
dry rocky hillsides, in fence-rows and by roadsides, and in the south im dry open Oak woods and on the 
margins of upland Pine forests. 
The wood of Viburnum prunifolium is heavy, very hard, strong, brittle, and close-grained. It 
contains numerous obscure medullary rays, and is brown tinged with red, with thick nearly white 
sapwood composed of twenty to thirty layers of annual growth. The specific gravity of the absolutely 
dry wood is 0.8332, a cubic foot weighing 51.92 pounds. 
The astringent bark is nervine, antispasmodic, tonic, and diuretic; it has been admitted into the 
American pharmacopeia, and is sometimes used in the form of decoctions or fluid extracts for the 
treatment of urinary affections and chronic diarrhea and as a preventive of miscarriage,’ although 
some medical writers believe that its value has been exaggerated. 
The earliest mention of Viburnum prunifolium appears in John Banister’s Catalogue of American 
plants, published in Ray’s Historia Plantarum in 1688 ;* according to Aiton, it was cultivated in 
England as early as 17312 
Viburnum prunifolium varies considerably in the form of the leaves and in the amount and 
nature of their pubescent covering ; at the north it is usually glabrous except in the early stages of 
growth ; in the south the under surface of the leaves and their petioles are often clothed with rusty 
tomentum throughout the season. As an ornamental plant the Black Haw is valuable for its good 
habit, the abundance of its clusters of white flowers, its handsome fruit, and brilliant autumn foliage. 
1 Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. ii. 156 (Man. Pl. W. Texas). 4 Rhamnus Prunifolius fructu nigro, ossiculo compresso, The Black 
2 Phares, Atlanta Med. § Surg. Jour. n. ser. vii. 408.— Abbot, Haw, ii. 1927. 
Bost. Med. § Surg. Jour. xcix. 634. — Wilson, Liverpool Med.-Chir. Mespilus Prunifolia Virginiana non spinosa fructu nigricante, Plu- 
Jour. v. 36. — Brit. Med. Jour. i. 987. — Rusby, Bull. Pharm. July, kenet, Phyt. 46, £. 2; Alm. Bot. 249.— Miller, Dict. No. 11. 
1891, t. — U. S. Dispens. ed. 16, 1586. Viburnum foliis subrotundis serratis glabris, Clayton, FT. Virgin. 33. 
8 Johnson, Alan. Med. Bot. N. Am. 164, t. 6. 5 Hort. Kew. i. 371. — Loudon, Arb. Brit. ii. 1034, t. 193. 
