0321 



SNOWDROP TREE 



Family: PERSIMMON FAMILY [Translator's note: now in family Styracaceae]. 



Reproductive system: DODECANDRY, MONOGYNY. 



The four-winged snowdrop tree, Halesia tetraptera, LINN., [Translator's note: 

 now designated Halesia Carolina] is a tree that arrived from America to populate our 

 groves and to take its place among the brooms, lilacs, and Judas trees. The trunk rises 

 twenty or thirty feet. The limbs are extremely rigid and brittle. The leaves on the 

 branches are alternate, oval-lanceolate, pointed, with dentate margins, short petioles, 

 green above and somewhat pale underneath. The flowers are white, pendent on long 

 peduncles and grouped four or five together on older branches. They appear before the 

 leaves develop. The calyx is very small, with four not very deep indentations. The corolla 

 is large, bell-shaped, bulged out, and has four lobes. There are twelve to sixteen stamens; 

 the filaments join in a tube at their base, are adnate to the corolla, and terminate in erect 

 oblong anthers. The ovary is adherent and crowned by a style and a stigma. The fruit is 

 an oblong nut with four winged corners. It's pointed at the style, which remains attached. 

 It has four compartments and contains four seeds. 



FLOWERS: in May. 



RANGE: Carolina. It's naturalized in our gardens where the fruit ripens. 



NOMENCLATURE. Halesia, from Stephen Hales, the English naturalist born in 

 1677 and died in 1761. A member of the Royal Society of London, he is the author of 

 Vegetable Staticks, translated by Buffon [Translator's note: the work was published in 

 1727, the French translation in 1735]. In English, the snow-drop-tree. 



USES. This tree is suitable only as an ornamental for groves in springtime. It 

 accomplishes this objective well. 



