THE WHITE ALDER FAMILY 



CLETHRACE^ Klotzsch 



HIS small family consists of the single genus Clethra, with about 30 

 species of trees or shrubs, occurring in North and South America, 

 Japan, and the Pacific islands. They have no economic value except 

 for ornament; the common Sweet pepper-bush of the eastern United 

 States, Clethra alnijolia Linnaeus, is a well known ornamental shrub £md Bee 

 plant, with strongly sweet-scented flowers, and is .well worth a place in any 

 roomy garden, and other species are occasionally planted. 



The Clethraceae have alternate, deciduous, simple leaves. The flowers are 

 perfect, regular and small, in showy terminal elongated racemes or panicles; the 

 calyx is 5-cleft or 5-parted, persistent, its lobes imbricated in the bud; corolla 

 white, of 5 partially united, deciduous petals; stamens 10, their filaments slender; 

 the anthers arrow-shaped, inverted, their sacs opening at the apex; ovary superior, 

 3-angled or 3-lobed, 3-celled and hairy; ovules numerous; styles united and ter- 

 minated by a 3-lobed stigma. The fruit is a dry, subglobose, 3-lobed capsule, 

 splitting into 2-cleft valves at maturity; seeds very small and numerous; endo- 

 sperm fleshy. One of our species occasionally becomes arborescent. 



MOUNTAIN SWEET PEPPER BUSH 



GENUS CLETHRA [GRONOVIUS] LINNiEUS 

 Species Clethra acuminata Michaux 



JLSO called Mountain white alder, this is a small tree or shrub of moun- 

 tain woods from Virginia and West Virginia to Georgia and Alabama, 

 reaching a maximum height of 6 meters. 



The branches are usually erect or nearly so. The bark is thin, 

 close, red-brown, exfoliating in papery scales exposing the greenish gray inner 

 layers. The twigs are somewhat angular, hairy and grayish, becoming round, 

 scaly, glaucous and red-brown. The short-stalked leaves are crowded near the 

 ends of the branches, rather thin, ovate or elliptic, 10 to 20 cm. long, taper- 

 pointed, tapering or rounded at the base, finely toothed on the margin except near 

 the base, light green and smooth above, paler, somewhat glaucous and hairy, 

 especially on the brownish veins, beneath. The white fragrant flowers appear from 

 June to August in spreading or recurved, densely hairy racemes 5 to 20 cm. long; 

 the pedicels, with caducous bracts, are shorter than the flowers; calyx densely 



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