ROSACES 



357 



acute minute caducous bracts and bractlets; calyx broadly obconic and puberulous, 

 with short, nearly triangular lobes tipped with minute glands and about half as long 

 as the nearly orbicular creamy white petals. Fruit ^' in diameter, subglobose or 

 slightly pyriform, bright red, with thin flesh; seeds pale chestnut color, rounded at 

 the apex, acute at the base, about |' long. 



A tree, 20-30 high, with a trunk rarely more than a foot in diameter, spreading 

 slender branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and stout branchlets pubes- 

 cent at first, soon glabrous, becoming in their first winter brown tinged with red, and 



marked by the large leaf-scars and by oblong pale remote lenticels, and darker in 

 their second year, the thin papery outer layer of bark then easily separable from 

 the bright green fragrant inner layers; more often a tall or sometimes a low shrub, 

 with numerous stems. Winter-buds acute, ^' f' long, with dark vinous red acumi- 

 nate scales rounded on the back, more or less pilose, covered with a gummy exuda- 

 tion, the inner scales hoary-tomentose in the bud. Bark ^' thick, with a smooth 

 light gray surface irregularly broken by small appressed plate-like scales. Wood 

 close-grained, light, soft and weak, pale brown, with lighter colored sapwood of 15- 

 20 layers of annual growth. The astringent fruit is employed domestically in infu- 

 sions and decoctions, and in homo3opathic remedies. 



Distribution. Borders of swamps and rocky hillsides; Newfoundland to Mani- 

 toba and southward through the maritime provinces of Canada, Quebec and Ontario, 

 the elevated portions of the northeastern United States and the region of the Great 

 Lakes to the high mountains of Virginia and North Carolina; probably of its largest 

 size on the northern shores of Lakes Huron and Superior; in the United States, except 

 in New England, more often a shrub than a tree; on the Alleghany Mountains 

 usually low, with narrower leaflets and smaller fruit than northward. Of its various 

 forms the most distinct is 



Sorbus Americana, var. decora, Sarg., nov. nom. 

 (Pyrus Americana, var. decora, Silva N. Am. xiv. 101.) 



Leaves 4' -6' long, with stout usually red petioles often furnished with tufts of 

 dark hairs at the base of the petiolules, and 7-13 oblong-oval to lance-ovate leaflets 



