EVERGREEN TREES AND SHRUBS. 581 



that of the sassafras, about four inches long and one inch wide. 

 Where hardy it is considered a superb tree for massive hedges. 



The Carolina Laurel or Red Bay. Laurel carolinensis. — 

 An evergreen tree, indigenous from Virginia to Louisiana, and 

 similar in character, in most respects, to the noble laurel above 

 described. It forms a crooked trunk with few and irregular 

 branches, and only becomes luxuriant in the low wet lands of the 

 Gulf border, where it reaches a height of from fifty to seventy feet. 

 It is less hardy than the Laurus nobilis. 



The Catesby Laurel. L. catesbiana. — This is a low ever- 

 green shrub from five to ten feet high, growing on the sea-coast of 

 Georgia and the Carolinas. It has smaller and slenderer leaves 

 than the foregoing. How tender we do not know. 



The Portugal Laurel. Cerasus lusitaiiica. — An evergreen 

 tree of the cherry family, native of Portugal and the Canary islands, 

 where it becomes a huge bushy tree from thirty to sixty feet high. 

 In the south of England it is considered hardy, and one of the 

 most prized of gardenesque evergreens. It there ripens its seeds 

 perfectly without protection, though in Paris it is treated as but 

 half hardy. It grows in the form of a broad pyramidal bush, with 

 dense foliage and branches diverging regularly from an erect stem. 

 The leaves are from four to six inches long, slender, alternate, 

 thick, glossy, and a very pure green color. Flowers in small 

 racemes in June. Berries dark-purple. Rate of growth about one 

 foot per year. Loudon remarks that the tree grows well in any 

 soil that is very dry and poor, or very wet ! Many specimens 

 growing in England are remarkable for their low spreading forms. 

 In Oxfordshire, at Blenheim, is a tree, or bush rather, seventeen 

 feet high and one hundred feet in diameter ! The common form 

 of head is a diameter one-half greater than the height. In the 

 latitude of New York its cultivation is impracticable. 



THE GORDONIA. Gordonia. 



The Loblolly Bay, Gordonia lasianthus, is one of the 

 splendid flowering trees of the southern States, where it is sub- 



