SASSAFRAS-TREE. 
417 
le 
most numerous, have regularly three lobes."* It has been further remarked 
that the lobed leaves are the most numerous on the upper part of the tree Tin 
flowers, which put forth before the leaves, usually appear in Carolina and Geor- 
gia, from the middle to the last of March ; but in the vicinity of Philadelphia and 
New York, not before the beginning of May. They are disposed in short, slen- 
der racemes, of a pale-green colour, and protrude from the sides of the branches 
below the leaves, having the scales of the former bud for their floral leaves In 
this species, as with the Laurus nobilis, the sexes are confined to different trees 
I he fruit, or seeds, is of an oval form, of a deep-blue colour, and is contained in 
small, bright-red cups, supported by peduncles from one to two inches in length 
These seeds, when ripe, are eagerly devoured by birds, and soon disappear from 
the tree. ri 
Varieties. Nuttall states in his " Genera of North American Plants," that the 
inhabitants of Carolina distinguish two kinds of sassafras, the " Red'" and the 
"White," calling the latter, also, the "Smooth." The red variety he identifies 
with his sub-genus Euosmus ; and the white or smooth kind, he considers as 
belonging to the same sub-genus, which he calls Laurus Euosmus alhida, and 
of which he has adduced the following characteristics : Its buds and young 
branches are smooth and glaucous; its leaves are everywhere glabrous and thin. 
and the veins are obsolete on the under surface ; the petiole is longer. The root 
is much more strongly camphorated than the root of the red sort, and is nearly 
white. This kind, he says, is better calculated to answer as a substitute for 
ochra, (Hibiscus esculentus,) from its buds and young branches being much 
more mucilaginous. It is abundant in North and South Carolina, from the Ca- 
tawba Mountains to the east bank of the Santee, growing with the red variety, 
which, in North Carolina, is less abundant. 
Geography and History. The Laurus sassafras is said to be indigenous to 
every section of the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains, and to Upper 
Canada, where, in the last-named country, it is found between Niagara and 
Hamilton, in forty-three and a half degrees of north latitude; but there it dwin- 
dles down to a tall shrub, though healthy in its appearance, not exceeding twenty 
feet in height. In the neighbourhood of New York and Philadelphia, however, 
it grows to a height of forty or fifty feet, and attains a still greater elevation in 
the southern states. Indeed, it abounds from the state of New Hampshire to the 
banks of the Mississippi, and from the shores of the Atlantic, in Virginia, to the 
remotest wilds of Missouri, comprising an extent in one direction, of more than a 
thousand miles, and more than double that distance in the other direction. 
The sassafras, from the peculiar forms of its foliage, and the properties of its 
bark, wood, and leaves, is rendered a prominent object of notice, and it appears 
to have been one of the earliest trees of the North American forests to attract the 
attention of Europeans. Monardez, in 1549, and after him Clusius. treat of its 
uses. Gerard calls it the "ague-tree," and says that a decoction of its bark will 
cure agues and other diseases. And Bigelow states that, "Its character, as an 
article of medicine, was at one time so high, that it commanded an extravagant 
price, and treatises were written to celebrate its virtins." "It still retains a 
place," he adds, "in the best European pharmacopoeias." The most in teres tine 
historical recollection connected with this tree is, that it may be said to have led 
to the discovery of America ; as it was its strong fragrance, smell by Columbus, 
that encouraged him to persevere when his crew were in a state of mutiny ; and 
enabled him to convince them that land was nigh. 
The largest recorded tree of this species, in Britain, is at Syon. which is forty- 
six feet in height, with a trunk three feet in diameter, and an ambitus or spread 
of branches of thirty-four feet. There is another tree at Cohham Hall, m Kent 
* Bigelow Medicil Botany, p. 144. 
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