362 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



of prostrate stems. Bark :|'-1' thick, dark brown tinged with red, separating on the sur- 

 face into thin appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, light rich brown, 

 with thick lighter colored sapwood of 30-40 layers of annual growth; the most valuable 

 wood produced in the forests of Pacific North America for the interior finish of houses and 

 for furniture. The leaves yield by distillation a pungent volatile oil, and from the fruit a 

 fat containing umbellulic acid has been obtained. 



Distribution. Valley of Coos River, Oregon, southward through the California coast 

 ranges and along the high western slopes of the Sierra Nevada to the southern slopes of the 

 San Bernardino Mountains up to altitudes of 2500 ; usually near the banks of water- 

 courses and sometimes on low hills: common w y here it can obtain an abundant supply of 

 water; most abundant and of its largest size in the rich valleys of southwestern Oregon, 

 forming with the Broad-leaved Maple a considerable part of the forest growth. 



4. SASSAFRAS Nees. Sassafras. 

 Pseudosassafras H. Lee. 



Aromatic trees, with thick deeply furrowed dark red-brown bark, scaly buds, slender 

 light green lustrous brittle branchlets containing a thick white mucilaginous pith and 

 marked by small semiorbicular elevated leaf-scars displaying a single horizontal row of 

 minute fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and stout spongy stoloniferous roots covered by thick 

 yellow bark. Flower-bearing buds terminal, ovoid, acute, with 9 or 10 imbricated scales 

 increasing in size from without inward, the 3 outer scales ovate, rounded, often apiculate at 

 apex, keeled and thickened on the back, pale yellow-green below, dull yellow-brown above 

 the middle, loosely imbricated, slightly or not at all accrescent, deciduous at the opening of 

 the bud, much smaller than the thin accrescent light yellow-green scales of the next rows 

 turning dull red before falling, and obovate, rounded at apex, cuneate below, concave, coated 

 on the outer surface with soft silky pubescence, glabrous or lustrous on the inner surface, re- 

 flexed, f ' long, nearly %' broad, tardily deciduous, the 2 inner scales foliaceous, lanceolate, 

 acute, light green, coated on the outer surface with delicate pale hairs, glabrous on the inner 

 surface, infolding the leaves; sterile and axillary buds much smaller. Leaves involute in the 

 bud, ovate or obovate, entire or often 1-3-lobed at apex, the lobes broadly ovate, acute, 

 divided by deep broad sinuses, gradually narrowed at base into elongated slender petioles, 

 feather-veined, with alternate veins arcuate and united or running to the points of the 

 lobes, the lowest parallel with the margins, conspicuously reticulate-venulose, mucilaginous, 

 deciduous. Flowers opening in early spring with the first unfolding of the leaves, the males 

 and females usually on different individuals, in lax drooping few-flowered racemes in the 

 axils of large obovate bud-scales, their pedicels slender, rarely forked and 2-flowered, with- 

 out bracts, pilose, from the axils -of linear acute scarious hairy deciduous bracts, or that of 

 the terminal flower often without a bract; calyx pale yellow-green, divided nearly to the 

 base into narrow obovate concave lobes spreading or reflexed after anthesis, glabrous or 

 pubescent on the inner surface, those of the inner row a little larger than the others; sta- 

 mens in the American species 9, in the Asiatic 12 with those of the inner series reduced to 

 staminodes, inserted on the somewhat thickened margin of the shallow concave calyx-tube, 

 those of the outer series opposite its outer lobes; filaments flattened, elongated, light yellow, 

 those of the inner series furnished at base w j ith 2 conspicuous orange-colored stipitate glands 

 rounded on the back, obscurely lobed on the inner face, in the Asiatic species alternating 

 with 3 staminodes; anthers introrse, oblong, flattened, truncate or emarginate at apex, 

 4-celled, 2-celled in the Formosan species, orange-colored, in the female flower reduced to 

 flattened ovate pointed or slightly 2-lobed dark orange-colored stipitate staminodes, 6 in 2 

 rows in the American species and 12 similar to the stamens and staminodes of the staminate 

 flower in the Asiatic species; or occasionally fertile and similar to or a little smaller than 

 those of the staminate flower; ovary ovoid, light green, glabrous, nearly sessile in the short 

 tube of the calyx, narrowed into an elongated simple style gradually enlarged above into a 

 capitate oblique obscurely lobed stigma; in the staminate flower in the American species, 



