786 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



volucral scales beginning to unfold, enlarge and grow white in early spring and when the 

 flowers open in March at the south to May at the north, when the leaves are nearly fully 

 grown, forming a flat corolla-like cup 3'-4' in diameter, becoming at maturity obovoid, 1'- 



Fig. 704 



l|' wide, gradually narrowed below the middle and notched at the rounded apex, reticu- 

 late-veined, pure white, pink, or rarely bright red, deciduous after the fading of the flowers; 

 flowers in dense many-flowered cymose heads, in the axils of broad-ovate nearly triangular 

 minutely apiculate glabrous light green deciduous bracts, i' in diameter; calyx terete, 

 slightly urceolate, puberulous, obtusely 4-lobed, light green; corolla-lobes strap-shaped, 

 rounded or acute at apex, slightly thickened on the margins, puberulous on the outer sur- 

 face, reflexed after anthesis, green tipped with yellow; disk large and orange-colored; style 

 crowned with a truncate stigma. Fruit ripening in October, ovoid, crowned with the rem 

 nants of the narrow persistent calyx and with the style, bright scarlet or rarely yellow (f . 

 xanthocarpa Rehd.), lustrous, \' long and \' broad, with thin mealy flesh, and a smooth 

 thick-walled slightly grooved stone acute at the ends, and 1 or 2-seeded; seeds oblong, pale 

 brown. 



A bushy tree, rarely 40 high, with a short trunk 12'-18' in diameter, slender spreading 

 or upright branches, and divergent branchlets turning upward near the end, pale green or 

 green tinged with red when they first appear, glabrous or slightly puberulous, bright red or 

 yellow-green during their first winter and nearly surrounded by the narrow ring-like leaf- 

 scars, later becoming light brown or gray tinged with red; frequently toward the northern 

 limits of its range a much-branched shrub. Winter-buds formed in midsummer; the ter- 

 minal covered by 2 opposite acute pointed scales rounded on the back and joined below for 

 half their length, and accompanied by 2 pairs of lateral buds, each covered by a single scale, 

 those of the lower pair shedding their scales in the autumn and remaining undeveloped. 

 Bark of the trunk |'-j' thick, with a dark red-brown surface divided into quadrangular or 

 many-sided plate-like scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, brown sometimes 

 changing to shades of green and red, with lighter colored sap wood of 30-40 layers of annual 

 growth; largely used in turnery, for the bearings of machinery, the hubs of small wheels, 

 barrel-hoops, the handles of tools, and occasionally for engravers' blocks. 



Distribution. Usually under the shade of taller trees in rich well-drained soil; southern 

 Maine to southern Ontario, southern Michigan, southeastern Kansas and eastern Okla- 

 homa, and southward to central Florida and the valley of the Brazos River, Texas; on the 

 mountains of northern Mexico; comparatively rare at the north; one of the commonest 

 and most generally distributed inhabitants of the deciduous-leaved forests of the middle 

 and southern states, ranging from the coast nearly to the summits of the high Alleghany 



