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C. stricta, stiff cornel, or dog^wood, inhabits swampy places from Florida 

 to North Carolina and Virginia and is seen as a shrub, six to fifteen feet 

 high, with brown or greyish purple branches. Its oppcisitc ovale or ovate- 

 lanceolate leaves are much paler below than above and slightly rough, their 

 margins being often minutely denticulate. In llat cymes the small flowers 

 grow abundantly and later produce also small and pale blue drupes. 



C. Amb)iu}n, kinnikinnik, or silky cornel, remains always a shrub, at most 

 about ten feet high, and is found through low, moist woods and bordering 

 streams. On the undersides of its ovate or oval leaves there is a silky pubes- 

 cence, and such also noticeably covers the compact cymes, while as the 

 leaves grow old their surfaces are often blotched with purple, a colour prom- 

 inent on the branches. The drupes are pale blue and enclose a stone 

 pointed at its base. 



C. asperifblia, rough-leaved cornel, or dogwood, a pretty one of the 

 genus, can be told by its white fruit. Its leaves also which are extremely 

 rough above, are covered underneath with a silvery down. As a shrub it 

 occurs through low grounds from Georgia northward to Canada. 



C. flbrida, flowering dogwood, is too familiar, as through the woods it 

 casts out its early spring bloom, to need a full description. From the 

 species that have already been mentioned it mostly differs in having its 

 flowers subtended by a four-leaved white involucre, the obcordate divisions 

 of which are notched and tipped with pink at their apices. The true and 

 insignificant little flowers of the centre are greenish. Again its drupes are 

 ovoid and bright red. Late in the season when the leaves have nearly all 

 fallen they rest in great abundance on the ground giving to the dried soil a 

 warm cheery look. 



SOUR, OR BLACK GUn. TUPELO TREE. PEPPERRIDGE. 



Nyssa sylvdtica. 



Stamitiate flo7vers : %w\?(\\\ numerous; clustered at the ends of axillary, pubescent 

 peduncles. Pistillate flinoers : larger and from two to fourteen. Dni/^c: dark 

 blue or nearly black, about half an inch long and enclosing an ovoid, Hattened and 

 slighdy ridged stone, acrid to the taste until touched by frost. L<;i7ys : alter- 

 nate; entire, with petioles which when young are very downy; elliptical; dark 

 green above, lighter below, the midrib pubescent when young. Biirk: grcv. 

 rough, much broken in small ])ieces. 



"T'ain't no good no how," ayoung lad in the Alleghanies assured me 

 one day about the wood of the black gum, as there this tree is callrd. 

 " If yer let it git civered with wet, it rots ; and if yer keep it right smart dry 



