ERICACEAE 803 



brous or often puberulous on the midrib and veins, reticulate- venulose, %'-& long, %'-!' 

 wide, and sessile or short-petiolate; southward persistent for a year, northward deciduous 

 during the winter. Flowers appearing from March to May on slender drooping pedicels 



I' long, bibracteolate near the -middle, with 2 minute acute scarious caducous bractlets, 

 solitary in the axils of leaves of the year or arranged in terminal puberulous racemes 2'-3' 

 long from the axils of leafy or minute acute scarious bracts; corolla white, open-campanu- 

 late, slightly 5-lobed, with acute reflexed lobes, longer than the 10 stamens; filaments hir- 

 sute; anther-cells opening by oblique elongated pores. Fruit ripening in October, some- 

 times persistent on the branches until the end of winter, globose, \' in diameter, black and 

 lustrous, with dry glandular slightly astringent flesh of a pleasant flavor. 



A tree, 20-30 high, with a short often crooked trunk occasionally 8'-10' in diameter, 

 slender more or less contorted branches forming an irregular round-topped head, and slen- 

 der branchlets light red and covered with pale pubescence when they first appear, glabrous 

 or puberulous and bright red-brown in their first winter, later becoming dark red and 

 marked by minute elevated nearly orbicular leaf -scars; or northward generally reduced to 

 a low shrub, with numerous divergent stems. Winter-buds obtuse, nearly ^' long, with 

 imbricated ovate acute chestnut-brown scales often persistent on the base of the branchlet 

 throughout the season. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, light brown tinged with 

 red, with thick hardly distinguishable sapwood; sometimes used for the handles of tools 

 and in the manufacture of other small articles. Decoctions of the astringent bark of the 

 root and of the leaves are sometimes employed domestically in the treatment of diarrhoea. 

 The bark has been used by tanners. 



Distribution. Usually in moist sandy soil along the banks of ponds and streams; south- 

 eastern Virginia and North Carolina, from the coast to the valleys of the high Appalachian 

 Mountains, southward to the valley of the Caloosahatchie River, Florida, through the 

 Gulf states to the shores of Matagorda Bay, Texas, and through eastern Oklahoma, Arkan- 

 sas, and Missouri to southern Illinois, and the bluffs of White River, near Shoals, Martin 

 County, and near Elizabeth, Harrison County, Indiana; common in the maritime Pine- 

 belt of the south Atlantic and Gulf states, and of its largest size near the coast of eastern 

 Texas; in the interior less abundant and usually of small size. Passing into 



Vaccinium arboreum var. glaucescens Sarg. 

 Batodendron glaucescens Greene 



Differing in its glaucescent, pubescent or glabrous leaves, in its usually larger leaf-like 

 bracts of the inflorescence and often in its globose-campanulate corolla. 



