XVI. 3. THE SINGLE BERRY BLACK ALDER. 345 
with an apple green bark, which, on the large branches, turns 
to a pearly gray, and on the older stems is of a polished and 
clouded dark color, whence the plant derives its common name. 
‘I'he leaves are two or three inches long and half as broad, lance- 
shaped, oval, or inversely egg-shaped, acute at both ends, often 
abruptly at the extremity, sharply serrate, smooth above, downy 
along the prominent veins beneath, on footstalks half an inch 
long. ‘The flowers are white, the stamen-bearing, in crowded 
bunches, of from three to twelve in the axils of the leaves, on 
stems one or two lines long, with minute brown scales at the 
base. ‘The calyx consists of six small, appressed, rounded or 
jagged segments. ‘The corolla is of one piece, wheel-shaped, 
ending in six or scven, rounded, spreading, or recurved seg- 
ments, Just below the angles of which, within the tube, are the 
short stamens, with large brown anthers opening at the sides 
and discharging orange pollen. On the fertile flowers, which are 
single or crowded, on very short stems, the stamens are very short, 
and the false anthers are white and form a part of the filament. 
The berries are of a bright scarlet, round, or slightly compressed, 
about a quarter of an inch in diameter, solitary, or in bunches 
of two or three, and remain long on the bush. ‘The persistent 
calyx, at the base, is of a darker color, and the stigma, which 
crowns the berry, 1s brown. The pulp is yellowish, and envel- 
opes six or eight lunate seeds. ‘The flowers expand in June. 
‘The berries are ripe in September. 
The bark and berries of the black alder are somewhat bitter 
and astringent, and have been sometimes substituted for Peru- 
vian bark in the treatment of intermittent fevers. The bark 
has also been considered of great use, both taken internally, and 
employed as a wash, in cases of Incipient gangrene and in the 
cure of eruptions on the skin.—See Bigelow’s Med. Bot., III, 141. 
Sp. 2. Tse Sivere Berry Brack Atper. P. levigdéus Pursh. 
Leaves and fruit figured in Abbott's Insects of Georgia, II, Plate 86. 
A beautiful shrub, six, eight, or ten feet high, with grayish 
branches, scattered with minute dots of the same color, and a 
smooth, alder-like trunk with brownish green bark, clouded at 
AS 
