66 Soapberry (Sapindacece) 



Found, widely distributed in dry woodlands and fields 

 from Canada to Florida. 



A shrub one to three feet high, springing from a large 

 dark red root. During the American Revolution and in 

 the Civil War, in some of the Southern States its leaves 

 served for tea. Its root is sometimes used for dyeing. 



Common as the shrub is, it was late before I learned 

 to know it ; but since that time until now, when it has 

 come to be one of my familiar friends, always the prettiest 

 thing about it has seemed to me to be its quaint and tiny 

 silver-lined cups, emptied of their ripened seeds and shin- 

 ing on their dried stalks among the flowers and leaves of 

 a new year's growth. 



It was once widely advertised that the true China tea 

 plant had been discovered in a county of Pennsylvania, 

 and that its identity was certified by an expert from 

 Assam. A company was even formed for its cultivation 

 and sale. The fraud was soon detected ; they were 

 using the leaves of the New Jersey tea. An infusion of 

 these leaves tastes like the poorer grades of imported 

 teas, but probably it has none of the tonic effects of real 

 tea. 



ii. Family SAPINDACE^. (Soapberry Fam.) 



(i) Genus ACER, Tourn. (Maple.) 

 Fig. 20. Mountain Maple. A. spicatum, Lam. 

 Flowers, greenish, small, regular, crowded in lengthened 

 and upright clusters, which become drooping in fruit ; 

 either perfect or in the staminate and pistillate forms 

 on separate plants, appearing after the leaves. Petals, 

 narrow, generally five, not united. Sepals, of the 



