299 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
“In Scotland, the leaves of that alder have been used to tan 
leather and as food for sheep, and in France as winter food for 
cattle. Ulcers have been healed by them, and a decoction has 
been found efficacious in the cure of sore throats. The bark, 
which is astringent, is used by fishermen to stain their nets; 
with copperas it forms a black dye, and, when concentrated, an 
ink; and it is used by the Laplanders to stain their shoes, gir- 
dies, and other articles of skin.” —JVora Londinensis, Art. Alnus. 
“ The bark on the young wood, and the wood itself, is used for 
tanning, and the young shoots to die red, yellow and green.”’— 
Loudon. 
Sp. 2. Tue Spreckrep Axper. A. incdna. Willdenow. 
The leaf of the glaucous variety is figured in Michaux, II, Plate 75, figure 2. 
This alder is found in every part of Massachusetts, and in 
Maine and New Hampshire. 
The recent shoots and fruit-stalks are brown and downy, 
dotted with orange dots. They gradually become of an ashen 
or grayish brown where exposed to light, and on the larger 
branches and trunk, in the shade, the bark is of a reddisli or 
bottle-green color, speckled with conspicuous light gray dots, 
whence its common name of speckled alder. The stem is 
usually eight or ten feet high and from one to three inches in 
diameter, but it is sometimes much larger and higher,—twenty 
feet high and five or six inches in diameter. 
The leaves are from three to five inches long and two to four 
inches wide, broad oval, rounded or somewhat cordate at base, 
pointed at theend, doubly serrate or denticulate-serrate, (each of 
the larger veins usually forming a tooth with several serratures 
between, ) smooth and conspicuously impressed at the veins and 
veinlets above; of a soft coriaceous texture; covered with abund- 
ant, soft, often ferruginous pubescence beneath, with the veins 
and veinlets strikingly prominent. ‘The opening leaves are very 
downy. The footstalk stout, half an inch long, and downy. 
Stipules lanceolate, downy, as long as the footstalk, soon falling. 
The speckled alder is casily distinguished by the brilliant, 
polished, reddish green color of its stem-bark, and the size, reg- 
ularity, impressed reticulations and the downy under surface of 
