392 WOODY PLANT'S OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
Sp. 1. Tse Movuntamw Lavrer. Ciamoun. Spoonwoon. 
KK. latifolia. UL. 
Figured in Bigelow’s Medical Botany, I, Plate 13; also in Catesby’s Carolina, 
II, Plate 98; Abbott’s Insects, I, Plate 37; and in Audubon’s Birds, I, 
Plate 55. 
This extremely beautiful shrub occurs in various parts of the 
State; on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, at Cohasset, in 
several points on both sides of Buzzard’s Bay, in the neighbor- 
hood of Newburyport and Lowell, in many parts of Worcester 
County, on every side of Wachusett, and in the towns on both 
declivities of the Green Mountains. In the deep, shady ravines 
of these mountains, it sometimes attains a height of fifteen or 
even twenty feet, with a diameter of three or four inches. In 
most other places, and especially on open ground, it rarely ex- 
ceeds four or five feet in height. On an open, rocky pasture of 
many acres, south of Meeting-house Pond in Westboro’, it forms 
large, close, clumps or islets, intersected by plots and alleys of 
grass. In June and July, when every one of these innumerable 
green islets is crowned with white or rose-colored flowers, and 
cattle are feeding on the grass or lying under the few oaks 
which are scattered through the pasture,—the whole, with the 
lake and its fringe of trees, is worth going out of one’s way 
to see. 
‘The Indians called this plant clamoun. It is sometimes called 
spoonwood, rarely calico bush; most frequently, mountain lau- 
rel, or broad-leaved Kalmia. 
The stem of the mountain laurel is slender, with branches in 
twos or threes, or in imperfect whorls. The bark on the recent 
branchlets is of a yellowish green, which in a year begins to 
turn brown, and afterwards becomes ash-colored. The epider- 
mis on the older stems easily and often peals off in long plates, 
leaving a brownish or grayish bark. The principal stem in old 
stocks 1s covered with a grayish brown, entire bark, cleft regu- 
larly with long, smooth clefts. This difference in bark often 
gives the branches the appearance of having been grafted. The 
lcaves are scattered, opposite, or in whorls or tufts, from two to 
four inches long, and two fifths as broad, oval, acute at each 
