146 THE SANDALWOOD FAMILY. 



BUCKLEYA. {Plate XLIX.) 



Biickleya distichophylla. 



Flowers : minute ; dioecious; the fertile ones solitary and terminal at the end of 

 short twigs, with four sepal-like bracts, the sterile ones smaller, growing in a 

 cluster, and having four stamens. Drupe : oblong, with distinct furrows and 

 dotted finely with orange colour. Leaves : opposite or nearly so, in two ranks ; 

 ovate-lanceolate, pointed at the apex and pointed or rounded at the base; entire ; 

 thin; pubescent or glabrate. Bar^ 0/ liui^s : greyish ; erect; branching. An 

 ascending, slender shrub, ten to twelve feet high ; parasitic. 



Buckleya is a strange plant and, with the exception of its foliage being 

 delicate and graceful, would be rather an uninteresting one, were it not that 

 it is so exclusive in its habitat and was for so long a puzzle to scientific 

 men. Of all the rare plants in America it is one of the most rare. At 

 present its only known stations are near Paint Rock, North Carolina, and 

 Wolf Creek, Tennessee. As early as 1816 the plant was collected by Mr. 

 Thomas Nuttall, who, returning from the west, travelled up the valley of the 

 French Broad River. He referred the species to the genus Borya. More 

 than twenty years later, however, Mr. S. B. Buckley visited Paint Rock 

 and making collections from the shrubs sent his material to Dr. Torrey, who, 

 recognising the real character of the plants, dedicated in Mr. Buckley's 

 honour a new genus to embrace them. 



When Dr. Asa Gray first found it at Paint Rock he took away a root 

 which was eventually planted at Cambridge, Mass. Here it grew for many 

 years, but could never be propagated. 



Eventually, Professor Sargent went to Paint Rock and found the plants in 

 fruit. Many of the seeds he then carried to the Arnold Arboretum, where 

 they were sown and began to grow satisfactorily. In the meantime, however, 

 the fact that the plant was a parasite became known through experiments 

 made at Biltmore and that to secure its absolute well-being it should be 

 provided with a host plant. It greatly prefers, it would seem, to live on the 

 roots of Tsuga Canadensis. That the old plant at Cambridge lived so long 

 without this aid was probably because in the transplanting of it Dr. Gray 

 had carried off with its roots enough native material for it to subsist on. 

 The peculiar little nuts of Buckleya are not unpleasantly flavoured and very 

 abundant in oil. 



Flo^vers : dioecious ; the staminate ones growing in axillary umbels, the calyx 



