SAMBUCUS PUBENS. 

 RED-BERRIED ELDER. 



NATURAL ORDER, CAPRIFOLIACE^. 



SambUCUS PUBENS, Michaux. — Stems woody, two to eighteen feet high, the bark warty; leaflets 

 five to seven, ovate lanceolate, downy underneath; cymes panicled; fruit bright red, rarely 

 white. (Gray's Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States. See also Chapman's 

 Flora of the Southern United States, and Wood's Class- Book of Botany.) 



T is remarkable that the woody plants of our country and 

 the woody plants of Europe often have a particularly 

 close relationship. Thus the American sweet Chestnut, the 

 American white Birch, and others, have representatives in 

 Europe so closely allied that some botanists hardly regard them 

 as distinct species. Our Red-berried Elder is a good illustration 

 of this. There is a red-berried Elder in some of the mountains 

 of Europe long known as Sambucus racemosa ; and though 

 Michaux regarded our plant as distinct, and therefore gave it 

 the name of Sambucus piibens, the botanists of our time seem 

 disposed to regard it at best but a mere variety, and so write of 

 it as Sambucus racemosa, variety pubens. The older name, race- 

 mosa, was suggested by the inflorescence being drawn out 

 instead of forming a flat umbrella-like head, as in the common 

 elder; and in like manner puberis is from the fact that the 

 American Red-berried Elder which Michaux had, was more 

 downy in the leaves than the Red-berried form in Europe. But 

 in some parts of our country forms are found as smooth as the 

 European, so that this distinction, as it struck Michaux, is of 

 little moment. But there are other* characters which seem to 

 separate the plants of the two countries constandy, as may be 



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