ERICACE. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 135 
OXYDENDRUM ARBOREUM. 
Sorrel Tree. 
Oxydendrum arboreum, De Candolle, Prodr. vii. 601 
(1839). — Dietrich, Syn. ii. 1889. — Chapman, Fl. 263. — 
Curtis, Rep. Geolog. Surv. N. Car. 1860, iii. 79. — Koch, 
Dendr. ii. 128.— Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. 33. — Sar- 
gent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 98. — 
Watson & Coulter, Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 317. 
Andromeda arborea, Linnzus, Spec. 394 (1753). — Miller, 
Dict. ed. 8, No. 4. — Lamarck, Dict. i. 158. — Marshall, 
Arbust. Am. 7.— Castiglioni, Viag. negli Stati Uniti, ii. 
191.— Wangenheim, Nordam. Holz. 105.— Walter, F7. 
Car. 138. — Willdenow, Syec. ii. 612; Hnum. 452; Berl. 
Baumz. ed. 2, 31.— Michaux, Fl. Bor.-Am. i. 255, — 
Sour Wood. 
Desfontaines, Hist. Arb. i. 257.— Du Mont de Courset, 
Bot. Cult. ed. 2, iii. 495. — Michaux f. Hist. Arb. Am. iii. 
222, t. 7. —Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. i. 295. — Nuttall, Gen. 
i. 265. — Elliott, Sk. i. 491. — Mordant de Launay, Herb. 
Amat. v. t. 342. — W. P. C. Barton, FU. N. Am. i. 105, t. 
30. — Hayne, Dendr. Fl. 59.— Sprengel, Syst. ii. 291. — 
Gray, Man. 266. 
Andromeda arborescens, Persoon, Syn. i. 480 (1805). — 
Loddiges, Bot. Cab. xiii. t. 1210. 
Lyonia arborea, D. Don, Edinburgh New Phil. Jour. xvii. 
159 (1834).— Don, Gen. Syst. iii. 831.—Spach, Hist. 
Vég. ix. 486. 
Nouveau Duhamel, i. 178.— Bot. Mag. xxiii. t. 905. — 
A tree, occasionally fifty or sixty feet in height, with a tall straight trunk twelve to twenty inches 
in diameter, and slender spreading branches which form a narrow oblong round-topped head. The 
bark of the trunk is two thirds of an inch to an inch in thickness, gray tinged with red, and divided by 
deep longitudinal furrows into broad rounded ridges covered with small thick appressed scales. The 
branchlets, when they first appear, are glabrous, light yellow-green, and marked with orange-colored 
lenticels, and in their first winter are orange-colored to reddish brown. The inner bud-scales at maturity 
are an inch long, an eighth of an inch wide, spatulate, acute at the apex, and slightly puberulous on 
the inner surface and the margins. The leaves, when they unfold, are bronze-green, very lustrous, 
and glabrous with the exception of a slight pubescence on the upper side of the midribs and of a few 
scattered hairs on the under side of the midribs and on the petioles ; at maturity they are five to seven 
inches in length, an inch and a half to two inches and a half in breadth, and are borne on petioles two 
thirds of an inch long. In the autumn before falling they turn bright scarlet. The flower-clusters 
appear on the ends of the leafy shoots of the year late in June or early in July, and the flowers, which 
are a third of an inch in length and arranged in lax drooping panicles seven or eight inches long, open 
three or four weeks later. 
ripens in September, although the empty capsules often remain on the branches until late in the 
The fruit, which hangs in drooping clusters sometimes a foot in length, 
autumn. 
Oxydendrum arboreum is distributed from Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, 
to southern Indiana and middle Tennessee, and southward along the Alleghany Mountains to western 
Florida and the eastern shores of Mobile Bay, and through the elevated regions of the Gulf states to 
western Louisiana. It is usually found in well-drained gravelly soil on ridges rising above the banks 
of rivers in forests of White Oaks, Hickories, Tupelos, Walnuts, and Sugar Maples, and attains its 
largest size on the western slopes of the Big Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. 
According to Aiton, the Sorrel-tree was cultivated in England by Philip Miller as early as 1752. 
Among the small trees of North America few are more beautiful or better deserve the attention of 
planters. The handsome lustrous leaves are not injured by insects or fungal diseases ; the large droop- 
ing clusters of white flowers appear at a season when few other trees are in bloom; and the color of 
the foliage in autumn is not surpassed in brilliancy and splendor by that assumed by any other tree. 
1 Aiton, Hort. Kew. ii. 69. — Loudon, Arb. Brit. ii. 1111 (Lyonia). 
