ADDISONIA 23 
(Plate 12) 
CLETHRA ALNIFOLIA 
Sweet Pepperbush 
Native of eastern North America 
Family CLETHRACEAE WHITE ALDER Family 
Clethra alnifolia I,. Sp. Pl. 396. 1753. 
A loose, spreading shrub, up to fourteen feet high, the hang 
covered by a thin red-brown bark, and the twigs minutely canescen 
The foliage is light green and the flowers are white and deliciously 
fragrant. The oe borne on short petioles, measure up to four 
inches in length by half as broad, are obovate, with a tapering 
base and acute or s Pare apex; the margins are sharply serrate and 
so! veins mo Sie beneath, usually glabrous. e flowers are 
s 4-5 inches long, with a few small tiaves at the 
bse: tt they te “Rightly c crowded and spreading. ‘The pedicels, calyx 
and capsules are covered with short gray hairs. The petals are 
five, slightly united at base and longer than the blunt sepals. 
The ten stasittis have pink anthers. The ovary is 3-an ngled, be- 
coming a three-lobed capsule, which Specs splits into six 
valves and remains on the plants all w 
This plant was first figured by arate Plukenet on plate 15 of 
the “ Phytographia, seu stirpium illustrium et minus cognitarum 
icones,’’ published in London in 1691, without indication of the 
source of his specimens. Subsequently Mark Catesby in his 
“Natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama islands,” 
also published in London, in 1731, figured the catbird sitting on a 
spray of this bush and stated that it endures the climate at Fulham 
in Christian Gray’s garden. Gronovius in his flora of Virginia also 
described it, and early records show that it must have been sent to 
England from Pennsylvania, Virginia and Carolina by various 
collectors. It is known to grow in the eastern states from Maine to 
Florida, mostly near the coasts in swamps and wet woods, but it 
does well in cultivation in dry soil, producing its fragrant clusters 
of white flowers in July and August. 
There are only two other species of this genus known in the 
United States, one, Clethra acuminata, being found in mountain 
woods of the southern Alleghanies from Virginia to Georgia, and the 
other, Clethra tomentosa, along the coast from North Carolina to 
Florida and Alabama. Other species occur in the high mountains 
of Cuba and Jamaica, forming dense masses of shrubbery to the 
exclusion of almost everything else. Others occur in Mexico and 
Central America and down through South America to Peru and 
Chile, while there are still other species in Japan, China and Java. 
ELIzaBETH G. BRITTON, 
