Mountain Laurel 



755 



III. MOUNTAIN LAUREL 



GENUS KALMIA LINN^US 

 Species Kalmia latifolia Linnaeus 



HIS beautiful small evergreen tree or shrub is well known from New 

 Bmnswick and Ontario to Ohio, Arkansas, Florida and Louisiana. 

 In the North it grows mostly in moist soil near swamps, but south- 

 ward it is found on dry or rocky hillsides, reaching a maximum height 

 of 12 meters, with a trunk diameter of 5 dm. It is so well known that it has 

 received a great many common names, such as Laurel, American laurel, Poison 

 laurel, Sheep laurel. Small laurel. Wood laurel, CaHco bush. Calico flower, CaHco 

 tree, Ivywood, Spoonwood, Mountain ivy, and Poison ivy. 



The trunk is usually short, often crooked, the branches widely forked. The 

 bark is about 2 mm. thick, furrowed, dark reddish brown. The twigs are sHghtly 

 angular, somewhat viscid-hairy, green or reddish, soon becoming smooth, shin- 

 ing, and brown. The leaf-buds are small 

 and axillary, the tips of the twigs often dying 

 in winter. The leaves are persistent, alter- 

 nate, rarely in pairs, stiff and leathery, ellip- 

 tic to oblong-lanceolate, taper- pointed, dark 

 green above, paler and yellowish green with 

 a broad, yellowish midrib beneath; the leaf- 

 stalk is stout, nearly round, 5 to 20 mm. 

 long. The showy, fragrant flowers appear 

 from March to July in corymbs 10 to 15 cm. 

 across, on slender, glandular hairy pedicels i 

 to 3 cm. long; calyx smooth, deeply divided 

 into 5 narrow, pointed lobes 2 mm. long; co- 

 rolla white or pink, wheel-shaped with 10 

 depressions in the hmb, 2 to 2.5 cm. across, 

 with 10 keels and 5 shallow, round lobes, 

 marked with purple lines; stamens 10, their 

 filaments shorter than the corolla; anthers 

 awnless, opening by pores at the apex ; ovary 

 5-celled; style long, slender and exserted. The fruits persist on the branches until 

 the following spring; they are capsules 5 to 7 mm. in diameter, depressed -globose, 

 tipped by the long style, and subtended by the persistent calyx-lobes, 5-celled and 

 many-seeded, borne on erect stalks; seeds small, oblong, brown. 



Its wood is hard, strong, close-grained and reddish brown, the specific gravity 

 about 0.72. It is occasionally used like the wood of the Great laurel, and the 

 bases are dug up and made into imitation Briarwood pipes, sometimes called 

 Ivy pipes. The leaves are reputed to be ver}' poisonous to man and cattle, and 



Fig. 690. Mountain Laurel. 



