ERICACEAE 795 



pink (f. rubra Rehd.) viscid-pubescent, marked on the inner surface with a waving dark 

 rose-colored line and with delicate purple penciling above the sacs, rarely with a broad 

 purple or chocolate-colored band (f. fuscata Rehd.). Fruit ripening in September, 

 crowned with the persistent style, T %' in diameter, and covered with viscid hairs, remaining 

 on the branches until the following year; seeds oblong, light brown, scattered by the 

 opening of the valves. 



A tree, rarely 30-40 high, with a short crooked and contorted trunk sometimes 18'- 

 20' in diameter, stout forked divergent branches forming a round- topped compact head, 

 and slender branchlets light green tinged with red and covered with soft white glandular- 

 viscid hairs when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous, and in their first winter green 

 tinged with red and very lustrous, turning bright red-brown during their second year and 

 paler the following season, the bark then separating into large thin papery scales exposing 

 the cinnamon-red inner bark, and marked with large deeply impressed leaf-scars showing 

 near the centre a crowded cluster of fibro- vascular bundle-scars; more often a dense broad 

 shrub 6-10 high, with numerous crooked stems. Winter-buds formed before midsummer 

 in the axils of the leaves just below those producing the inflorescence-buds, their inner scales 



Fig. 710 



accrescent, and at maturity often 1' long and |' wide, ovate, acute, light green, covered 

 with glandular white hairs, and in falling marking the base of the shoots with conspicuous 

 broad scars. Bark of the trunk hardly more than y 1 ^' thick, dark brown tinged with red, 

 and divided by longitudinal furrows into narrow ridges separating into long narrow scales. 

 Wood heavy, hard, strong, rather brittle, close-grained, brown tinged with red, with slightly 

 lighter colored sapwood; used for the handles of tools, in turnery, and for fuel. 



Distribution. New Brunswick to the northern shores of Lake Erie and southward in the 

 Atlantic coast region to Virginia and to southern Ohio, Martin and Crawford Counties, 

 Indiana and central Tennessee, along the Appalachian Mountains and their foot-hills to 

 Georgia, and from western Florida through Alabama to eastern and southern Mississippi 

 and the valley of the Boguc Lusa River, Washington Parish, Louisiana; often growing in 

 low moist ground near the margins of swamps or on dry slopes under the shade of de- 

 ciduous-leaved trees, or on rich rocky hillsides; most abundant and often forming dense 

 impenetrable thickets on the southern Appalachian Mountains up to altitudes of 3000- 

 4000; usually shrubby, and only arborescent in a few secluded valleys between the Blue 

 Ridge and the Alleghany Mountains of North and South Carolina; abundant and of large 

 size along small streams in Liberty County, western Florida. The var. myrtifolia K. Koch 

 with small lance-oblong leaves, and small compact clusters of small flowers, a compact 



