348 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



1%' wide, thin, light green, becoming reflexed; petals 6 or 9, concave, coriaceous, ovate, 

 short-pointed, erect, those of the outer row 4'-5' long and sometimes 2' wide, much longer 

 and broader than those of the inner rows; filaments bright purple. Fruit ovoid, gla- 

 brous, 2|'-4' long, rose color when fully ripe; seeds obovoid, %' long. 



A tree, 30-40 high, with a straight or often inclining trunk rarely more than 18' in 

 diameter, stout irregularly developed contorted branches wide-spreading nearly at right 

 angles with the stem or turning up toward the ends and growing parallel with it, and stout 

 brittle branchlets green during their first season, becoming in their first winter bright red- 

 dish brown, very lustrous, and marked by occasional minute scattered pale lenticels, and 

 by the large oval horizontal slightly raised leaf-scars with scattered fibro-vascular bundle- 

 scars, brown during their second and gray during their third season; generally much smaller, 

 sometimes surrounded by several stems springing from near the base of the trunk and 



Fig. 314 



growing into a large bush surmounted by the head of the central stem. Winter-buds: ter- 

 minal, acute or bluntly pointed, purple, glabrous, covered with a glaucous bloom, usually 

 about 1' long; axillary globose, the color of the branch. Bark \' thick, light gray, smooth, 

 and marked by many small bristle-like excrescences. Wood light, soft, close-grained, not 

 strong, light brown, with creamy white sap wood of 35-40 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Deep rather moist rich soil along the banks of mountain streams or the 

 margins of swamps, and widely distributed in the Appalachian Mountain region, but no- 

 where very common; valley of the Susquehanna River, Pennsylvania (Lancaster and 

 York Counties), to southern Alabama, middle Kentucky and Tennessee, and northeastern 

 Mississippi; in central and southwestern Arkansas; and in southeastern Oklahoma (near 

 Page, Le Flore County, 0. W. Stevens), extending in Virginia and North Carolina nearly 

 to the coast; of its largest size in the valleys along the western slopes of the Great Smoky 

 Mountains in Tennessee up to altitudes of 2000. 



Often cultivated as an ornamental tree in the northern states, and in northern and 

 central Europe. 



6. Magnolia macrophylla Michx. Large-leaved Cucumber-tree. 



Leaves obovate or oblong, acute or often abruptly narrowed and acute or rounded at 

 apex, narrowed and cordate at base, bright green and glabrous on the upper surface, silvery 



