BUTTON-BUSH TRUE — RIVER BALL-FLOWER TREE. 93 



that graciously blandish their charms before us, while they 

 serve to introduce us to the living fountains that spring high 

 up among the mountains, or rivulets that run among the 

 hills, or meander the hotter intervals, that loiter more 

 leisurely still through fruitful vales, along lowland leas, to 

 tranquil bay, or to the great peaceful ocean itself. 



The branches often shoot straight up from large trunks 

 borne down by floods forming a kind of secondary deformed 

 tree, but in the broader, stiller waters of larger streams, the 

 erect sound body is every way perfect, and the branches 

 spread gracefully, arching outwards into the most regular 

 forms of beauty. On recent shoots the bark is a live-green 

 to reddish bronzy, with a few brown dots, in age becoming- 

 lighter or clay-gray ; the body-bark splits and spreads into 

 cracky, rough diverging fissure-spaces, frequently covered 

 with mosses and lichens. The shoots are tough and pliable 

 notwithstanding the large pith, yet the older wood is soft, 

 light, and brittle. The leaves opposite, in whirls of three or 

 four, broadly-oval or lance-like, or oblong-egg shaped, very 

 entire, acute base, and sharply-lance-pointed, smoothish shin- 

 ing-green above, lighter netted and downy on the veins 

 beneath; texture rather tough and leathery, three to five 

 inches long, about two broad; the leaf-stems half to one 

 inch long, stipules leave their scars between the insertions 

 above. 



To note the flowers more fully, the globular heads on 

 round stalks one to three inches long, from the axils of 

 leaves, in terminal sevens apparently, but really in whirls 

 of twos, threes, and fours, just like the leaves; tiny calyx, 

 short, green, tubular, silky-hairy, four-sided, and ends in 

 four lobes or rounded teeth. Slender, almost thready, flower- 

 tube twice as long as the calyx, the four rounded teeth seg- 

 ments tipped black ; threads of the four anthers attached to 

 the throat. Seeds similar to sycamore. 



From the Cinchona or Peruvian bark alliance of this 

 Pond Dogwood, as it has also been named, it would be reason- 

 able to expect the bark, especially of the root, would cure 

 fever and ague, it is accordingly celebrated for this purpose; 

 and, also as a valuable bitter tonic for obstinate coughs, and 

 in the treatment of external sores, etc. Flourishes well 

 around springs and in good garden soils freely watered, of 

 course; a fine ornamental shrub, of celebrity abroad, w T here 

 it is prized in the green-house. 



