Vi. 1. THE BALM OF GILEAD. 245 
southward, somewhat abundantly, through the New England 
States, and as far as West Chester County, i Pennsylvania. 
Sp. 3. Tue Batm or Gmeav. P. céndicans. Aiton. 
Leaf figured by Michaux, Sylva, II, Plate 98; and by Audubon, Birds, I, 
Plate 79. 
A handsome tree, attaining sometimes the height of sixty or 
seventy feet, and usually, when full grown, fifty or sixty, even 
on the poorest soils. It grows readily and rapidly every where, 
and makes a tolerably sized tree sooner and more surely than 
almost any other. It has hence been planted and is still found 
growing, aS an ornamental tree, in many situations where it is ex- 
tremely difficult to make the other forest trees grow. The recent 
shoots are stout and large, of a deep green, with long gray dots, 
smooth and uniform above, ridged with strong ridges below the 
leaves, and striate with light green towards the base. The 
small trunks and branches are of a dark grayish green, of the 
shade called French green, with occasional blotches of a darker 
color; the stalk, on old trees, rough, with long, narrow clefts, 
and often ridged with large, projecting mdges above the prin- 
cipal roots. In moist situations, yellow and red lichens and 
green mosses fill the cavities and invest the bark of the trunk. 
The leaves are very large, on footstalks less compressed than 
in most poplars, and often somewhat hairy above, ovate, round, 
or somewhat heart-shaped at base, acuminate, obtusely and 
unequally hooked, serrate quite to the footstalk, somewhat three- 
nerved, dark green, polished and shining on the upper surface, 
whitish and with the veins reticulate beneath. Buds and sti- 
pules very gummy. ‘The branches are not angled. 
It throws its roots to a very great distance just beneath, and 
in some instances far beneath the surface. In one instance, I 
knew the roots to pass beneath and throw up suckers on the 
other side of a house forty feet wide. 
This tree 1s desirable near habitations, on account of its agree- 
able fragrance in spring, but the abundant cotton of the female 
aments, and the appearance of the aments themselves, not unlike 
a large caterpillar, on the ground, constitute an objection. A 
