32 HOUGH'S AMERICAN WOODS. 



ant in the coast region, and preferring gravelly bottom-lands. It 

 attains its greatest development in western Oregon. 



PHYSICAL PROPERTIES. Wood light, soft, weak, with numerous 

 medullary rays and quite uniformly distributed small ducts. The heart- 

 wood is of a light pinkish-brown color and usually checks badly 

 between the rings. The sap-wood is of a yellowish-white color and 

 more sound. Specific Gravity, 0.5087; Percentage of Ash, 1.57; 

 Relative Approximate Fuel Value, 0.5007; Coefficient of Elasticity, 

 30517; Modulus of Rupture, 370; Resistance to Longitudinal 

 Pressure, 275; Resistance to Indentation, 138; Weight of a Cubic 

 Foot in pounds, 31.70. 



USES. The wood of this tree is of no commercial value, but the 

 tree is occasionally planted in the Pacific states for ornamental pur- 

 poses. The fruit is considered well worth gathering by the rural 

 people, and with it excellent pies, preserves and jelly are made. The 

 fruit is considered very superior in flavor to that of the Sweet Elder 

 (S. Canadensis) in the eastern states. 



MEDICINAL PROPERTIES. The Elders generally possess various 

 medicinal properties. The flowers are gently excitant and sudorific, 

 the berries diaphoretic, aperient and alterative, the inner bark a 

 hydragogue cathartic, and the leaves a violent purgative.* 



GENUS RHODODENDRON, LINNAEUS. 



Leaves alternate, entire, coriaceous or membranous, persistent or deciduous, 

 without stipules and usually clustered at the ends of the branches. Flowers per- 

 fect, showy, in terminal umbels or corymbs from large cone-like scaly buds, the 

 thin scales falling away as the flowers develop; calyx 5-parted or toothed, often 

 very small or obsolete; corolla large with petals united, usually funnel-shaped or 

 campanulate, with five (or rarely more) somewhat irregular lobes, deciduous; 

 stamens usually 8-10 (exceptionally more or less) unequal, generally declined 

 with filiform filaments pilose at base; anthers 2-celled, attached by the back, each 

 cell opening by a terminal pore; pistil with long style somewhat declined or 

 incurved, with capitate lobed stigma and superior 5-20-celled ovary, each cell 

 containing numerous anatropous ovules attached to a central placenta. Fruit a 

 woody capsule of 5-20 cells splitting at maturity along the septa from the apex 

 and turning back from the seed-bearing axis, thereby liberating the numerous 

 saw-dust like seeds, having a loose testa produced at the ends into short laciniate 

 appendages; embryo minute in fleshy albumen. 



Genus composed of trees and shrubs of nearly 200 species, mostly Asiatic, and 

 in cultivation innumerable forms are produced by hybridization. The name is 

 derived from the Greek podbv, rose and SsvSpor, tree. 



* U. 8. Dispensatory, 16th ed., pp. 1318-1319. 



