326 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
making the plant look lower than it is; they have a jointed 
appearance, each joint enlarging upwards, and seeming to have 
been drawn out from the one below it. Bark grayish yellow, 
very tough. On the last year’s shoots, it is of a greenish or yel- 
lowish bronze, with a pearly lustre. Leaves alternate, two or 
three inches long, and half as wide, oval or obovate, entire, 
tapering at each extremity, green and smooth above, pale or 
whitish and rather downy beneath, on short stalks. The 
flowers appear in April or May, and fall before the leaves ex- 
pand. “Previously to their emerging, they exist in miniature 
within a small hairy bud, which occupies a sheath or cavity in 
the end of each flowering branch.”’* There are usually three 
from each bud, with their short footstalks cohering. They are 
half an inch long, of a pale or greenish white or yellowish 
color, pendeut, lateral, from the midst of the young unexpanded 
leaves. ‘The corolla-lke calyx is monosepalous, tubular, trum- 
pet-shaped, or bell-shaped, contracted at base, and in the middle, 
enlarging upwards, and ending in an uregularly and slightly 
toothed border. Stamens eight, alternately longer, conspicu- 
ously terminated by ovoid anthers, projecting, on slender fila~ 
ments, which proceed from the lower part of the tube. Style 
curved, somewhat longer than the stamens, proceeding from the 
side of a roundish ovary. Berry small, oval, containing one, 
compressed, ovate seed. 
This plant grows in wet, marshy and shady places from 
Canada to Georgia. It is conspicuous, when in flower, for the 
number of its yellow blossoms, which fade and fall rapidly as 
the leaves expand. 
The peculiar properties of the family are remarkable in this 
plant. The fresh bark produces a sensation of heat in the 
stomach, and at last brings on vomiting. The wood is very 
pliable, and the bark of singular tenacity and toughness. It 
has such strength that a man cannot pull apart so much as 
covers a branch of half or a third of an inch in diameter. It is 
used by millers and others for thongs. The aborigines used it 
as cordage. 
* Bigelow. 
