414 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
ed at the end, and notched by the elevation of the hard, colored 
point, about which is often a shade of flesh-color or purple. The 
individual. flowers are very small, sessile, crowded on a common 
receptacle, with a few minute, rounded scales at their base. A 
calyx of one green piece, investing the ovary and ending in four 
obtuse teeth, contains four slender, reflexed, oblong, fugacious, 
greenish-yellow petals, four erect stamens with oblong anthers, 
and a persistent, capitate style, somewhat shorter, rising from 
a brownish, circular disk. 
The fruit is in bunches on the enlarged, club-shaped footstalk, 
of a bright scarlet, oblong-egg-shaped, crowned with the dark 
purple calyx. They are bitter and unpleasant, but, when touched 
by the frost, help to furnish food to the robin and other birds 
that remain with us during winter. At the time of maturity, 
they appear in the fork of two opposite branchlets, which end in 
the casket-shaped flower-bud of the succeeding year. 
The leaves early begin to change to a purple, and turn to a 
rich scarlet or crimson above, with hght russet beneath, or to 
crimson on a buff or orange ground above with a glaucous pur- 
ple beneath. ‘T'hese, surrounding the shining scarlet bunches 
of berries, make the tree as beautiful an object at the close of 
autumn as it was in the opening of summer. 
The Flowering Dogwood is of slow growth, and the wood 
is hard, heavy and solid, of a fine, close texture, and suscep- 
tible of a beautiful polish. It is often called box-wood, and is 
employed as its substitute, and for the handles of chisels, ham- 
mers, and other instruments, and for the cogs of wheels, and 
other articles made by the turner. 
The bark is very bitter, with something of an aromatic taste. 
According to Dr. Bigelow, it acts on the human system as a 
tonic, an astringent and an antiseptic, approaching in its effects 
to the character of the Peruvian bark. For this it has been 
substituted and employed with great success in the treatment 
of intermittent and other fevers. 
From the bark of the smaller roots the Indians obtained a 
good scarlet color. The smaller branches, stripped of their bark 
and used as a brush, are said to render the teeth extremely 
white. 
