NOTES ON SASSAFRAS. 



Edward W. Berry. 



(with plate XVIII AND FOUR TEXT FlGURES) 



M 



especially when they have a geological history. Our common 

 Sassafras proves no exception to this statement. Ranging in size 

 from a bush to a tree 125 feet high and with a trunk seven feet 

 in diameter/ distributed from Massachusetts west to Iowa and 

 Kansas, and from Ontario and Michigan south to Florida and 

 Texas, ascending to 3500 feet above the sea level in Virginia, 

 it is equally at home in the dry sandy soil of some of our road- 

 sides or in rich woodlands. Belonging to a cosmopolitan trop- 

 ical family of over 900 species, some of which were well known 

 in the most ancient times, and many of which are of consid- 

 erable economic and medicinal value (camphor, cinnamon, 

 etc.), the common Sassafras was first described by Linnaeus 

 as Laurus Sassafras^ in allusion to the common Spanish name. 

 It is with the leaves that we are principally concerned, and it is 

 interesting 'to note that all of our manuals speak of them as 

 '* entire or three-lobed/'3or as ** entire to three-lobed,'* '^ although 

 in reality they are often four or five-lobed, not occasionally, but 

 regularly so, some trees having all their leaves similarly four or 

 five-lobed, while I have occasionally found specimens with six 

 lobes. Most authors, lacking the time or material for verifi- 

 cation, repeat previously published statements which are often 

 misleading. Believing that there is no organ whose variations 

 are not without significance, especially in view of the impor- 

 tance recently assigned to the statistics of variation, I have 

 examined several hundred leaves of Sassafras of all ages, from 

 trees of all sizes, and from all positions; from saplings, shoots 

 from trunks, barren and flowering branches, etc. A discussion 



^Brixton, Ilius. Fl. 2:97. 'Sp. PI. 371. 1753. 3 Wood, Classbook, p. 620. 

 '^Gray, Manual ; Chapman, Southern Flora; Brixton, 111. Flora. 



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