44 
TREE WHORTLEBERRY. 
Vaccinium arboreum , Marshall, p. 157. Mich. Flor. Amer. 1 , p. 230. 
Pursh. Flora, 1. p. 285. Elliott, Sk. 1, p. 495. 
Vaccinium diffusum . Aiton. Hort. Kew. vol. 2, p. 11. 
This species, commencing to appear on the dry margins 
of swamps in North Carolina, and extending to Florida and 
Arkansas, becomes a tree of 10 to 20 feet in height, with 
an irregular round top, and sending out many long, straight 
suckers from the root. The leaves are nearly evergreen, 
oboval, or almost round, smooth and shining. The racemes 
arise from the old wood, with the flowers white, tinged with 
red, and angular. The berries are round, smooth, black, 
nearly dry and astringent, filled with a granular pulp almost 
like saw-dust, yet the taste is pleasantly subacid. 
The bark of the root is astringent, and is sometimes 
given in decoction as a remedy for chronic dysentery and 
diarrhoea. The dried fruit is equally efficacious and more 
agreeable to the palate, (Elliott.) We have not sufficient 
materials for a figure of this curious tree. 
Mountain Laurel, ( Rhododendron maximum) “ is found, 
as you know, at Medfield and at Attleborough in Massa- 
chusetts, and also, I believe , near Portland in Maine.” 
(G. B. Emerson.) I am unable to decide whether this 
interesting plant is found as far north as the state of 
Maine, though it is not improbable. On the high banks of 
the Delaware near Bordentown, we meet with natural 
clumps of this shrub, which in Pennsylvania is scarcely 
found nearer than the first chain of the Alleghany Moun- 
tains. 
Spoon Wood ( Kalmia latifolia ), “abounds in almost 
every part of Massachusetts, as far north as Lowell,” (G. 
B. Emerson,) and 1 have reason to believe, also, that it 
