364 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
Section First.—f lowers all similar and fertile. 
Sp. 1. Tse Nagep Visurnum. Witue Rov. Vi nudum.  L. 
A slender, erect shrub, from six to twelve feet high, growing 
in swamps and wet woods from Newfoundland to Georgia. 
The recent shoots are dark green, with numerous minute, rust- 
colored scales. ‘The older stems are covered with a light ash- 
colored bark. The fruit-stalks, leaf-stalks, under surface of 
the leaves, and the mid-rib somewhat above, are sprinkled with 
brown, rusty dots, or scales. The leaves are opposite, two or 
three inches long, very variable in width, on short, flattened 
petioles which nearly or quite embrace the smaller branches, 
varying from broad-lanceolate to oval-elliptic, obovate and 
sometimes rhomboidal, the extreme ones more or less atten- 
uated at both extremities, the lower ones obtuse at each end, 
entire, obsoletely serrate or crenate, coriaceous, smooth and 
shining above, beneath dotted with rusty brown scales. Foot- 
stalks rather long, channelled, and slightly winged. 
The flowers are white, or yellowish white, in terminal cymes, 
on a footstalk half an inch to two inches long. The branches, 
radiating from a single point, are flattened, channelled and an- 
gular, and much sub-divided, with linear, fugacious bracts at 
the base of the pedicels. Flowers crowded; the calyx ending in 
five, thin, membranous, white, obtuse teeth; the corolla small, 
cup-shaped, with obtuse segments. Fulainents very long; an- 
thers small, yellow. ‘The flowers expand in May and June. 
The fruit is apple-shaped, compressed, with the mmute calyx 
in the terminal cavity. one quarter of an inch long, of a deep blue 
color, and with a glaucous bloom; it 1s ripe in September. It 
has a sweetish taste and may be eaten. The stone is flattish, 
with an obtuse point, slightly hollowed on one side and convex 
on the other. The slender, tough rods of the previous year are 
much used, in some parts of the country, 1o bind sheaves. 
Sp. 2. Tse Swerr Visurnum. V. lenidgo. L. 
A beautiful, small tree, rising sometimes to the height of fif- 
teen or twenty feet, with rich foliage, and clothed, in June, with 
