EVERGREEN TREES AND SHRUBS. 581 
that of the sassafras, about four inches long and one inch wide. 
Where hardy it is considered a superb tree for massive hedges. 
The Carolina Laurel or Red Bay. Laurel carolmejisis . — 
An evergreen tree, indigenous from Virginia to Louisiana, and 
similar in character, in most respects, to the noble laurel above 
described. It forms a crooked trunk with few and irregular 
branches, and only becomes luxuriant in the low wet lands of the 
Gulf border, where it reaches a height of from fifty to seventy feet. 
It is less hardy than the Laurus nobilis. 
The Catesby Laurel. L. catesbiana. — This is a low ever- 
green shrub from five to ten feet high, growing on the sea-coast of 
Georgia and the Carolinas. It has smaller and slenderer leaves 
than the foregoing. How tender we do not know. 
The Portugal Laurel. Cerasus lusitanica. — An evergreen 
tree of the cherry family, native of Portugal and the Canary islands, 
where it becomes a huge bushy tree from thirty to sixty feet high. 
In the south of England it is considered hardy, and one of- the 
most prized of gardenesque evergreens. It there ripens its seeds 
perfectly without protection, though in Paris it is treated as but 
half hardy. It grows in the form of a broad pyramidal bush, with 
dense foliage and branches diverging regularly from an erect stem. 
The leaves are from four to six inches long, slender, alternate, 
thick, glossy, and a very pure green color. Flowers in small 
racemes in June. Berries dark-purple. Rate of growth about one 
foot per year. Loudon remarks that the tree grows well in any 
soil that is very dry and poor, or very wet! Many specimens 
growing in England are remarkable for their low spreading forms. 
In Oxfordshire, at Blenheim, is ‘a tree, or bush rather, seventeen 
feet high and one hundred feet in diameter ! The common form 
of head is a diameter one-half greater than the height. In the 
latitude of New York its cultivation is impracticable. 
THE GORDONIA. Gordonia. 
The Loblolly Bay, Gordonia lasianthus^ is one of the 
splendid flowering trees of the southern States, where it is sub- 
