The Natural System of Botany. 137 



divides into several valves. It is often cultivated in 

 Si nd as a garden flower, and is grown in the open border 

 1 in the spring, when it blossoms in August and Sep- 



tenober. 



THE NATURAL SYSTEM OF BOTANY. 



NUM BER FITS. 



Order — Magnoliace^e. The Magnolia Tribe. 



This order comprises only a few genera, but contains some 

 of the noblest of vegetable productions. Several species of 

 the genus Magnolia are familiar to the American reader. Of 

 these perhaps the most magnificent is M- grandijlora, which 

 is found in most of the Southern States, and less commonly, as 

 far north as Pennsylvania. This splendid tree grows to the 

 height of from sixty to eighty feet, its leaves are very large 

 and of a brilliant green, and its flowers are white, fragrant, and 

 nearly a foot in diameter. M. glauca is a native of New Eng- 

 land, and is the species best known in the North, where it is 

 usually called White Bay. Although inferior in height, and 

 in the size and brilliancy of its flowers, to its gigantic brother 

 of the South, it is yet one of the most striking objects in the 

 forests of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Its leaves are of a 

 regular, elliptical form, and have a bluish bloom on their lower 

 sides. Its bark and berries, which latter are red, are in some 

 esteem for the cure of coughs and some other diseases. 

 Another American species is M. acuminata, also a large and 

 handsome tree, which produces cones of fruit, having some 

 resemblance to a small cucumber, whence^its common name, 

 Cucumber Tree. " It is in the East, however," says Lindley, 

 "that the Magnolia tribe has its fragrance most elaborated. In 

 the dwarf Talauma of the Chinese, (Magnolia Pumila,) with 

 its yellow and brown flowers, and the Tsjampaca, the most 

 beautiful of trees, beneath whose majestic foliage the native 

 Indian constructs his cottage of Bamboo stakes and palm 



