314 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
most suitable name, and one not appropriated to any other tree, 
is Tupelo, the name by which it and several other species of 
this genus were known to some tribes of the aborigines. 
The Tupelo is always a striking, and often a very beautiful 
tree. It usually rises toa height of not more than thirty or forty 
feet; but in dense, moist woods, where it has been surrounded by 
other tall trees, I have seen it sixty or seventy feet high. No 
tree varies more in its aspect. In the neighborhood of Boston, 
where it abounds, especially in the low grounds in Cambmidge, 
on the borders of Jamaica Pond, and in other places in Brook- 
line, it is a low tree, throwing out a very grcat number of 
horizontal or drooping branches, forming a short, cylindrical 
head, flat above. Where it has long stood by itself, and its nat- 
ural tendency has been completely unimpeded, it forms a low, 
very broad, palm-hke head. Sometimes it is pyramidal or con- 
ical; and sometimes the dense mass of foliage has the shape of 
an inverted cone, very broad and flat at top. 
The trunk, which is almost always erect, and which seldom 
rises many feet,—commonly not more than six or scven,—be- 
fore it throws out branches,—is invested with a dark ashy gray 
bark, much, but not deeply broken by longitudinal furrows. In 
very old stocks it is sometimes broken into somewhat regular 
polygons. ‘The branches, which are far more numerous than on 
any other tree, frequently so close to each other, that it would be 
difficult to find room for more, are almost uniformly horizontal 
near the trunk, and arch downwards towards the extremities. 
Often very crooked, they are thickly set with smaller ramufica- 
tions, which form a short spray, projecting in every direction. 
The bark on the new shoots is of a bright apple or reddish 
green, on the older branchlets it is red or brownish, shining 
through a pearly, thin epidermis. The leaves, which are alter- 
nate on the growing shoots, but in tufts of four or more on the 
ends of the lateral branchlets, are of a resplendent green above, 
reflecting the light lke those of a tropical plant. They are 
somewhat paler beneath, and vary in shape from lanceolate to 
broad oval, and obovate, and in size from onc inch to four or five 
inches in length, and from one half an inch to two inches in 
breadth. ‘They are usually wedge-shaped at base, sometimes 
