XX. 5. THE ALDER LEAVED CLETHRA. BVT 
XxX. 5. THE CLETHRA. CLESTHRA. L. 
The name is the Greek word for the alder, which the plants 
of this genus resemble in their leaves. They are mostly Amer- 
ican shrubs with alternate, deciduous leaves, and white, bract- 
eate flowers in axillary or terminal spikes. The calyx is five- 
parted, persistent; corolla so deeply five-parted as to appear 
five-petalled; stamens ten, with pointed anthers; capsule en- 
closed by the calyx, with three, many-seeded cells, which open 
in the middle. 
Tse Axper Lzaven Cretarsa. C. alnifolia. LL. 
Poorly figured in Catesby’s Carolina, I, 66. 
A shrub from two to eight feet high, showing a long spike of 
white, fragrant flowers towards the end of summer, when most 
other shrubs have long cast their blossoms. It grows naturally 
and abundantly by slow streams, or in islets in deep bogs, where 
it can, at most seasons, bathe its feet in water. 
The flower-stem is of a whitish green and downy, below 
which the shoot is of a faint reddish color, covered with a gray 
down. 'Thestem at last becomes dark purple, striate with gray. 
The leaves are inversely egg-shaped, gradually tapering at base 
to a short, downy footstalk, pointed, and serrated with pointed 
serratures from below the middle to the extremity, smooth, 
downy on the mid-rib above, a little hairy on the mid-rib and 
primary veins beneath. Flowers in long racemes, terminal, or 
from the axils of the upper leaves. Cup of five short, hollow, 
ovate, pointed, white, downy segments, which are persistent, 
and, after the fall of the corolla, close round and protect the 
ovary. Petals apparently five, oblong, concave, rounded at the 
extremity, twice as long as the calyx, white with lines of green. 
Stamens ten, long, cylindrical, unequal. Anthers with two di- 
verging lobes, pointed at the apex, opening by pores below, at 
length inverted, orange-brown. Ovary round, downy. Style 
as long as the stamens. Stigma three-parted. Capsule obtusely 
triangular, opening by the sides of the three cells, and contain- 
ing many small angular seeds attached to the partitions. 
AY 
