ERICACE. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 139 
KALMIA LATIFOLIA. 
Laurel. Mountain Laurel. 
FLoweErs in clustered panicles in the axils of upper leaves. 
glandular-viscid. 
Kalmia latifolia, Linnzus, Spec. 391 (1753). — Bot. Mag. 
v. 175. — Wangenheim, Beschreib. Nordam. Holz. 105; 
Nordam. Holz. 64, t. 24, £. 50. — Marshall, Arbust. Am. 
72.— Castiglioni, Viag. negli Stati Uniti, ii. 270. — La- 
marck, Dict. iii. 345; Il. ii. 487, t. 363, f. 1. — Geertner, 
Fruct. i. 305, t. 63, £. 7. — Walter, FZ. Car. 138. — Abbot, 
Insects of Georgia, i. t. 87. — Willdenow, Berl. Baumz. 
161; Spec. ii. 600; Hnum. 450.—Schkuhr, Handbd. i. 
359, t. 116. — Schmidt, Oestr. Bawmz. iii. 42, t. 166. — 
Nouveau Duhamel, i. 210, t. 44. — Michaux, Fl. Bor.- 
Am. i. 258.— Persoon, Syn. i. 477.— Thornton, Sez. 
Syst. Linn. t.— Desfontaines, Hist. Arb. i. 220. — Du 
Mont de Courset, Bot. Cult. ed. 2, iii. 322. — Michaux 
f. Hist. Arb. Am. iii. 147, t. 5. — Pursh, F2. Am. Sept. i. 
Capsules depressed, 
Hayne, Dendr. Fl. 54.— Elliott, Sk. i. 481.— Guimpel, 
Otto & Hayne, Abbild. Holz. 162, t. 137. — Sprengel, Syst. 
ii. 293. — Audubon, Birds, t. 55.— Sertum Botanicum, 
iv. t.— Mordant de Launay, Herb. Amat. iii. t. 151.— 
Don, Gen. Syst. iii. 850. — De Candolle, Prodr. vii. 729. — 
Spach, Hist. Vég. ix. 498, t. 139. — Hooker, Fl. Bor.-Am. 
ii. 41. — Dietrich, Syn. ii. 1407.— Torrey, Fl. N. Y. i. 
440.— Darlington, F7. Cestr. ed. 3, 172. — Chapman, 
Fl. 264. — Curtis, Rep. Geolog. Surv. N. Car. 1860, 
iii. 99. — Koch, Dendr. ii. 152. — Emerson, Trees Mass. 
ed. 2, ii. 443, t. — Lauche, Deutsche Dendr. ed. 2, 250, 
f. 100. — The Garden, xxii. 6, t. 343. — Gray, Syn. Fl. N. 
Am. ii. 38. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census 
U. S. ix. 98. — Watson & Coulter, Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 
296. — Bigelow, FU. Boston. 103. — Nuttall, Gen. i. 267. — 319. 
A tree, rarely thirty to forty feet in height, with a short crooked contorted trunk sometimes 
eighteen or twenty inches in diameter, and stout forked divergent branches which form a round-topped 
compact head; or more often a dense broad shrub six to ten feet high, sending up from the ground 
numerous crooked branches. The bark of the trunk, which is hardly more than a sixteenth of an inch 
thick, is dark brown tinged with red, and is divided by longitudinal furrows into narrow ridges which 
separate into long narrow scales. The branches, when they first appear, are light green tinged with 
red, and are covered with soft white glandular-viscid hairs; they soon become glabrous, and in their 
first winter are green tinged with red and very lustrous, turning bright red-brown during their second 
year, and paler during the following season, when the bark begins to separate in large thin papery scales, 
exposing the cinnamon-red inner bark, and the branches are marked with large deeply depressed leaf- 
scars showing near the centre a crowded cluster of fibro-vascular bundle-scars. The young shoots begin 
to grow in early spring from buds formed before midsummer in the previous year in the axils of the 
leaves just below those from which the clusters of flower-buds are produced, and in which they are 
almost completely immersed ; the tip of the branch dies when these axillary buds, two of which usually 
produce branches, are formed, and appears during the summer as a small black point between the last 
pair of leaves. The inner bud-scales are accrescent at maturity, often an inch long and half an inch 
wide, and are ovate, acute, light green, and covered with glandular white hairs, and in falling mark the 
base of the shoots with conspicuous broad scars. The leaves are alternate or sometimes in pairs or in 
threes, conduplicate in vernation, each leaf in the bud being inclosed by the one immediately below 
it, oblong or elliptical-lanceolate, acute, or rounded and tipped at the apex with callous points, and 
gradually narrowed at the base ; when they unfold they are slightly tinged with pink and are covered 
with glandular white hairs, and at maturity they are thick and rigid, dark and rather dull green above, 
lighter and yellow-green below, three to four inches long and an inch to an inch and a half wide, with 
broad yellow midribs rounded on both sides, and obscure immersed veins not distinguishable on the 
lower surface ; they are borne on stout terete or slighty flattened petioles two thirds of an inch in 
length, and begin to fall during their second summer. The inflorescence-buds appear in the autumn 
