TREES OF NORTH CAROLINA 89 



(Wilmington). Examples: trees along Battle's 

 brook. 



147. Vaccinium arboreum Marsh. Sparkleberry. 



A small tree found from the lower mountains to 

 the coast, and most plentiful in the coastal plain. In 

 Chapel Hill it occurs on sandy banks and rocky 

 bluffs along the creeks, or as a rare shrub on the 

 uplands. Leaves small, shiny, obovate; fruits small, 

 black, dry, sweetish, scarcely edible. Date of flow- 

 ering: May 23, 1909. Examples: trees on both 

 sides of Morgan's Creek from King's Mill to Scott's 

 Hole, also in woods east of cemetery, etc. 



148. Rhododendron maximum L. Great Laurel. 



The Great Laurel is a shrub or small tree, some- 

 times 25 feet high with a trunk 10 inches in diame- 

 ter, that is one of the most abundant, conspicuous, 

 and well known plants of the mountains. It des- 

 cends rather abundantly as far down >as Hickory, 

 and is rare and local as far east as Davidson County, 

 where is it known to occur on a bluff about 2 miles 

 northeast of Yadkin College. Curtis, in his Woody 

 Plants, says that this species extends as far east as 

 Orange, but the plant he had in mind is not this 

 species but the Purple or Rose Bay, Rhododendron 

 catawbiense Michx., a large shrub which has one of 

 the most singular distributions of any of our plants. 

 Replacing the R. maximum on the tops of the highest 

 mountains, it extends in a very scattering way down 

 their eastern sides, and thence on bluffs of rivers 



