706 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



becoming purple in the autumn, forming a terminal racemose cluster 3-4 long, 

 and rising solitary or 2 or 3 together above the spreading leaves; bracts and 

 bractlets lanceolate, acute, scarious, persistent. Flowers -*%' long, perfect or 

 often unisexual by the abortion of the ovary, with acute white petals inflexed at 

 the apex, and connivent styles. Fruit ripening in August, black, -|' in diameter, 

 globose, 3 5-angled, crowned with the blackened styles, with thin purple very juicy 

 flesh; seeds oblong, rounded at the ends, about ^' long. 



A tree, 30-35 high, with a trunk 6'-8' in diameter, stout wide-spreading 

 branches, and branchlets ^'-f ' in diameter, armed like the branches and young trunks 

 with stout straight or slightly incurved orange-colored scattered prickles, and nearly 

 encircled by the conspicuous narrow leaf-scars marked by a row of prominent fibro- 

 vascular bundle-scars, light orange-colored in their first season, lustrous and marked 

 irregularly with oblong pale lenticels, becoming light brown in their second year, 

 with bright green inner bark; more often a shrub, with a cluster of unbranched 

 stems 6-20 tall. Winter-buds: terminal conical, blunt at the apex, '-f' long, 

 with thin chestnut-brown scales; axillary triangular, flattened, about \' long and 

 broad. Bark of the trunk dark brown, about ^' thick, and divided by broad shallow 

 fissures into wide rounded ridges irregularly broken on the surface. Wood close- 

 grained, light, soft, brittle, brown streaked with yellow, with lighter colored sap- 

 wood of 2 or 3 layers of annual growth. The bark of the roots and the berries are 

 stimulant and diaphoretic, and are sometimes used in medicine and in domestic 

 practice. 



Distribution. Deep moist soil in the neighborhood of streams; western slope of 

 the Alleghany Mountains, Pennsylvania, to southern Indiana and southeastern Mis- 

 souri, and southward to northern Florida, western Louisiana, and eastern Texas; 

 probably of its largest size on the foothills of the Big Smoky Mountains in Tennes- 

 see; also in Manchuria and Japan in slightly modified forms. 



Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental plant in the eastern states and in western 

 Europe; less frequently seen in gardens than the more robust Manchurian plant. 



XLVIII. CORNACE-SJ. 



Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, scaly buds, and alternate or oppo- 

 site deciduous leaves without stipules. Flowers perfect or polygamo-dioecious ; 

 calyx 4 or 5-toothed ; petals 4 or 5 ; stamens inserted on the margin of the 

 epigynous disk ; anthers oblong, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudi- 

 nally ; ovary 1 or 2-celled ; ovule solitary, suspended from the interior angle 

 of the apex of the cell, anatropous ; micropyle superior. Fruit drupaceous, 

 1 or 2-seecled. Seed oblong-ovate ; seed-coat meinbranaceous ; embryo in 

 copious fleshy albumen ; cotyledons foliaceous ; radicle terete, turned toward 

 the hilum. 



The widely distributed Cornel family with fifteen genera, more numerous 

 in temperate than in tropical regions, has arborescent representatives of two 

 genera in North America. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT GENERA. 



Flowers polygamo-dioecious ; petals imbricated in the bud ; stigma lateral ; leaves alternate. 



1. Nyssa. 



Flowers perfect ; petals valvate in the bud ; stigma terminal ; leaves opposite or rarely 

 alternate. 2. Cornus. 



