528 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
bark on the young shoots is smooth and of a rich apple-green, 
becoming afterwards of a soft glaucous or whitish color. Before 
opening, the leaves are enclosed by the stipules, which, fall- 
ing, leave rings encircling the branch; when young, the leaves 
are covered with a pubescence, which, beneath, has a silken 
lustre. They are entire, elliptical, or slightly obovate, on short, 
tapering petioles, and, when mature, smooth, and light green 
above, pale-glaucous beneath, and of a soft, leathery texture. 
The mid-rib is prominent beneath, for the whole length of the 
leaf. The calyx of the solitary, terminal flowers, consists of 3 
concave, obovate, membranaceous sepals, resembling petals, but 
less delicate in texture. The corclla has usually 9 delicately 
white petals, tapermg at base, and rounded at the extremity, 
arranged in 8 circles, and mutually enfolding each other before 
expansion. The stamens are very numerous, 80 to 100 or 
more, in spiral lines on the conical, green torus, or receptacle,— 
3 or 4 of the outer ones often partly turned into petals. Anthers 
very long, yellow, pointed, set upon the inner side of the short 
filament and opening inwardly. Styles many, on a conical re- 
ceptacle ; stigmas long, yellow, turned back at the tip, and rising 
much above the ends of the long anthers. The fruit is a cone 
about two inches long, covered with scale-like, imbricated ova- 
ries, from which, when mature, escape the scarlet, obovate secds, 
which, instead of falling at once to the ground, remain some 
time suspended by a slender thread. 
No plant is, at every season and in every condition, more 
beautiful. The flower, two or three inches broad, is as beau- 
‘tiful and almost as fragrant as the water lily. Like most other 
plants, growing naturally in wet ground, it may easily be made 
to thrive in dry, but will not then continue long in flower. In 
moist situations, particularly if protected through the winter by 
a covering of boughs or mats, it continues to produce its flowers 
to the end of the warm season. 
Like other plants of this genus, the Small Magnolia possesses 
valuable properties as a tonic and as a warm stimulant and 
diaphoretic; and it has been used with great success in chronic 
rheumatism, in intermittent fevers, and particularly in fever and 
ague. ‘T’o secure the virtues of the plant, a tincture should be 
