516 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 
officinale. The female flowers have twelve staminodes in three rows of six, three, 
and three; only six staminodes in two rows of three each occurring in the American 
species. 
There is a tree of this species, 10 feet high, growing in the Coombe Wood 
nursery, which was raised from seed sent by Wilson in 1900. It has made 
wonderful growth during the past summer, and is very handsome. It differs from the 
American species in having glabrous non-ciliate leaves, which are very lustrous on 
the upper surface; and the young branchlets are also devoid of pubescence. 
SASSAFRAS OFFICINALE, Sassarras 
Sassafras officinale, Nees ab Esenbeck u. Ebermaier, /oc. cit.; Bentley and Trimen, Afedicinal 
Plants, iii, 220 (1880). 
Sassafras Sassafras, Karsten, Pharm. Med. Bot. 505 (1882); Sargent, Silva WM. Amer. vii. 17, 
tt. 304, 305 (1895), and Zvees N. Amer. 337 (1905). 
Sassafras variifolium, O. Kuntze, Rev. Gen. Pl. ii. 574 (1891); Sargent, in Bot. Gazette, xliv. 
226 (1907). 
Laurus oes Linneus, Sp. P2. 371 (1753); Loudon, 47d. et Frut. Brit. iii. 1301 (1838). 
A tree, attaining in America 90 feet in height and 18 feet in girth. Bark,’ 
according to Sargent, dark red-brown, deeply and irregularly divided into broad 
scaly ridges. Young shoots green or reddish, pubescent when young, becoming 
glabrous, remaining green in the second year. Leaves (Plate 199, Fig. 5) deciduous, 
entire, or two- to three-lobed; the entire leaves oval with an obtuse apex and 
cuneate base ; the others obovate, with a large triangular or oblong lobe on one or 
both sides, directed forwards and outwards ; margin entire or repand, ciliate; upper 
surface dark green with a scattered short pubescence; lower surface pale with a 
long pubescence, often falling by the end of summer; petiole, 1 to 2 inches long, 
pubescent. The nerves are pinnate, the two lowest arising near the base of the 
leaf, running nearly parallel with the margin, and ending in the lobes when these 
are present. 
Berry * gives an account with illustrations of the extraordinary variation which 
occurs in the leaves of wild trees growing in America. He has found leaves with 
four, five, and even six lobes. 
SEEDLING 
Out of some seed gathered by Elwes at the Arnold Arboretum late in Septem- 
ber and sown at Colesborne in October 1904, only one germinated in the following 
June, and the seedling showed the following characters in August :—The cotyledons 
remain in the seed-case, the young stem emerging between them after the splitting 
of the seed into two halves. The terete glabrous and reddish stem first gives off 
alternately two minute scales, which are succeeded by true leaves ; the first, } inch 
long, arising 14 inch above the ground, is half-oval in shape, one side of the leaf 
1 In cultivated trees in England the bark is grey and fissured into longitudinal narrow ridges. 
2 Bot, Gazette, xxxiv. 426 (1902). 
