HIGH-BUSH CRANBERRY 



HIGH-BUSH CRANBERRY. CRANBERRY-TREE. 

 GUELDER ROSE 



Vibtirnum opulus. 



An exceedingly handsome shrub with smooth branches, four 

 to ten feet high, growing in low ground, along streams and on 

 the borders of swamps. Ranges from New Brunswick to Penn- 

 sylvania, and westward to Michigan, South Dakota and Oregon. 



Leaves. Opposite, simple, palmately veined, two to five 

 inches long, one and a half to four inches wide, rounded or 

 wedge-shaped at base, three-nerved, three-lobed; lobes divergent, 

 sparingly toothed with unequal blunt teeth. They come out of 

 the bud involute, pale green tinged with red, shining and downy; 

 when full grown are dark dull green, nearly glabrous above, 

 paler green, somewhat pubescent, beneath, deeply corrugated 

 above. Petioles about an inch long, with one or two stipular 

 appendages, which are more or less glandular. Autumnal tints 

 bronze purple and dull red. 



Flowers. May, June. Of two kinds, perfect and neutral. 

 White, borne in broad, compound, terminal pedunculate radiant 

 cymes, three to four inches across, having five large, unequal 

 rounded lobes. The perfect flowers are small, about three -six- 

 teenths across. The neutral one-half to three-fourths of an inch 

 across. 



Calyx. Tube adnate to the ovary ; border five-toothed. 



Corolla. Cream-white, rotate, five-lobed ; lobes rounded, 

 spreading, imbricate in bud. Perfect flowers a trifle more yel- 

 lowish than the neutral. 



Stamens. Five, inserted on the corolla-tube, exserted. 



Pistil. Ovary inferior, one-celled ; stigma three-parted. 



Fruit. -- Drupe, globose or oval, bright red, translucent, 

 crowned by the limb of the calyx, three-eighths to half an inch 

 long, intensely acid and slightly bitter ; clings to the branch all 

 winter. Stone flat, orbicular, not grooved. September. 



The High-bush Cranberry loves the north, and 

 along the sixtieth parallel encircles the globe with lit- 



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