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is eagerly sought for rustic furniture, for tools and as a substitute 
for making brier-wood pipes. It once grew abundantly on the 
of the Harlem River at High Bridge and Inwood; there is 
ea a oan of it left in Bronx Park, but it seldom blooms, which 
probably accounts for there being any of it still indigenous. 
The flowers grow in clusters at the ends of last year’s branches. 
forming large cymes of white and pale pink. Each flower isa 
study in itself and most difficult to draw or paint, on account of 
the numerous ridges and projections on the outside of the buds 
and the delicate curves and depressions of the open flower. 
The pedicels are about one inch long, and glandular hairy; the 
calyx is also glandular and small, with five narrow sepals; the 
corolla has a short basal tube and ten prominent dorsal ridges, 
five of which are longer and also glandular, the limb is five-lobed 
with shallow notches between the lobes and ten dark red blotches, 
marking the indentations in which the anthers are held; the 
filaments are white and curved. They spring upward around 
the pistil, if suddenly released by the visit of a bumble-bee, or 
other large insect, dusting his back with a white pollen which 
escapes from the anthers, through two.apical pores. he 
pistil is at first curved, later becoming erect, with five greenish- 
yellow stigmatic surfaces and a superior pane! ed which 
develops into a five-lobed capsule. An unusual form of the 
laurel has been found near Tee Fel ee ee the 
corolla divided to the base into five long narrow petals. This 
freak has been cultivated, though not nearly as beautiful, and 
produces seed. 
The leaves are thick and glossy and keep their dark green color 
and brilliancy throughout the winter. They are from two to 
five inches long and sometimes nearly two inches wide and when 
young have minute black glandular hairs on the upper surface; 
the petioles are short and thick, opposite or alternate and clus- 
tered at the ends of the branches, which are stout and woody, 
often spreading and usually making a small dense shrub about 
two to six feet high. Rarely, in sheltered inaccessible valleys of 
the southern Alleghanies, it is said to become a tree having a 
trunk thirty to forty feet high ah a diameter of 18 inches; but 
this is probably a thing of the past 
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