802 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



apex by a white spongy aril; embryo straight in cartilaginous albumen; cotyledons 

 oblong, obtuse; radicle elongated, superior. 



Cephalanthus with five species is widely distributed in North and South America, 

 and in southern and eastern Asia, and the Malay Archipelago. 



The generic name, from nf<f>a\-f) and &v6os, relates to the capitate inflorescence. 



1. Cephalanthus occidentalis, L. Button Bush. 



Leaves ovate or lanceolate, acute, acuminate or short-pointed at the apex, rounded 

 or cuneate at the base, mernbranaceous, dark green on the upper, paler and glabrous 

 or puberulous on the lower surface, 4' -7' long and l'-3^' wide, with stout light yel- 

 low midribs and 5 or 6 pairs of slender primary veins nearly parallel with the sides 

 of the leaf, deciduous or persistent during the winter; their petioles stout, grooved, 

 glabrous or puberulous, '-f in length; stipules minute, nearly triangular. Flow- 

 ers: flower-heads panicled, I'-l^' in diameter; flowers creamy white, very fragrant, 

 opening from the middle of May in Florida and Texas to the middle of August in 

 Canada and on the mountains of California; calyx usually 4 or occasionally 5-lobed, 

 with short rounded lobes, and slightly villose toward the base; corolla glandular or 



eglandular; anthers nearly sessile, included, discharging their pollen before the flow- 

 ers open; disk thin and obscure. Fruit ripening late in the autumn in heads f'-f' in 

 diameter, green tinged with red and ultimately dark red-brown. 



A tree, occasionally 40-50 high, with a straight tapering trunk a foot in diam- 

 eter, and frequently free of limbs for 15-20, ascending and spreading branches, 

 and stout branchlets with a thick pith, glabrous and marked by large oblong pale 

 lenticels and developed mostly in verticels of 3's from the axillary buds of one of 

 the upper nodes, without terminal buds, light green when they first appear, pale 

 reddish brown, covered with a glaucous bloom during their first winter and then 

 marked by small semicircular leaf-scars displaying semilunate fibro-vascular bun- 

 dle-scars, and connected by the persistent black stipules or by their subulate scars, 

 darker the following season, and dark brown in their third year, the bark then 

 beginning to separate into the large loose scales found on the large branches and 

 on the stems of small plants; usually a shrub, only a few feet high. Winter-buds 

 axillary, single or in pairs or in 3's one above the other, minute, nearly immersed in 



