LAUBACEiE. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



13 



SASSAFRAS. 



Flowers dioecious or rarely perfect ; calyx 6-lobed, the lobes in two series, nearly 

 equal, imbricated in aestivation, deciduous ; corolla ; stamens 9, in three series ; 

 disk ; ovary superior, 1 -celled ; ovule solitary, suspended. Fruit baccate. Leaves 

 alternate, destitute of stipules, deciduous. 



Sassafras, Nees ab Esenbeck & Ebennaier, Handb. Med.- tham & Hooker, Gen. iii. 160. — Pax, Engler & Prantl 



Fharm. Bot. i. 418 (1830) . — Endlicher, Gen. 322. — Pfianzenfam. iii. pt. ii. 119. 



Meisner, Gen. 327. — BaiUon, Hist. Fl. ii. 479. — Ben- 



An aromatic tree, with thick deeply furrowed dark red-brown bark, scaly buds, slender light green 

 lustrous brittle branches containing a thick white mucilaginous pith and marked with small semiorbicu- 

 lar elevated leaf-scars displaying single horizontal rows of minute fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and stout 

 spongy stoloniferous roots covered with thick yellow bark. Flower-bearing buds terminal, ovate, acute, 

 protected by nine or ten imbricated scales increasing in size from without inwards, the three outer 

 scales ovate, rounded and often apiculate at the apex, keeled and thickened on the back, pale yellow- 

 green below, dull yellow-brown above the middle, loosely imbricated, slightly or not at all accrescent, 

 deciduous at the opening of the bud, much smaller than the scales of the next rows ; these thin, 

 accrescent at maturity, light yellow-green, turning dull red before falling, obovate, rounded at the apex, 

 cuneate below, concave, coated on the outer surface with soft silky pubescence, glabrous and lustrous 

 on the inner surface, reflexed, often three quarters of an inch long, nearly half an inch broad, tardily 

 deciduous ; the two inner scales f oliaceous, lanceolate-acute, light green, coated on the outer surface 

 with delicate pale hairs, glabrous on the inner surface, infolding the leaves and falling as these begin 

 to expand ; sterile and axillary buds much smaller. Leaves involute, the lower inclosing those above 

 it in the bud, ovate or obovate, entire or often one to three-lobed at the apex, the lobes broadly ovate, 

 acute, divided by deep broad sinuses, gradually narrowed at the base into elongated slender petioles 

 flattened or slightly grooved on the upper side and rounded on the lower, feather-veined with alternate 

 veins arcuate and united, the lowest parallel with the margins, and when the leaves are lobed running 

 to the points of the lobes, conspicuously reticulate-venulose, mucilaginous, deciduous ; as they unfold 

 light green and somewhat pilose on the upper surface with scattered white hairs, cihate on the margins, 

 clothed on the lower surface with a loose pubescence of long white lustrous hairs; at maturity 

 membranaceous, dark dull green above, pale and glabrous or pubescent below. Flowers produced in 

 early spring with the first unfolding of the leaves, the males and females usually on different individuals 

 in lax drooping few-flowered pilose racemes developed from the axils of the large obovate bud-scales, 

 the upper flowers of the lowest raceme opening first. Pedicels slender, rarely forked and two-flowered, 

 ebracteolate, clothed with long pale hairs, produced from the axils of linear-acute scarious hairy 

 deciduous bracts; or that of the terminal flower often ebracteate. Calyx pale yeUow-green, divided 

 nearly to the base into six narrow obovate concave lobes, rounded and incurved at the apex, spreading 

 or reflexed after anthesis, those of the inner series a httle larger than the others. Stamens nine, 

 inserted in three series on the somewhat thickened margin of the shaUow concave calyx-tube, those of 

 the outer series opposite its outer lobes ; filaments flattened, elongated, sHghtly enlarged toward the 

 apex incurved, light yellow, those of the inner series furnished near the base with two conspicuous 

 oranffe-colored stipitate glands rounded on the back and obscurely lobed on the inner face ; anthers 

 innite oblono* flattened, truncate or slightly emarginate at the apex, rounded or wedge-shaped at the 



