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LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
quantities, but only in scattered specimens, to give interest 
and variety to a walk in the lawn or shrubbery. 
The Sweet Gum Tree. Liquidambar. 
Nat. Ord. Platanacese. Lin. Syst. Moncecia, Polyandria. 
According to Michaux,* the Sweet gum is one of our most 
extensively diffused trees. On the seashore, it is seen as 
far north as Portsmouth ; and it extends as far south as the 
Gulf of Mexico, and the Isthmus of Darien. In many of the 
southern states, it is one of the commonest trees of the forest ; 
it is rarely seen, however, along the banks of the Hudson, 
(except in New- Jersey,) or other large streams of New-York. 
It is not unlike the maple in general appearance, and its 
palmate, five-lobed leaves are in outline much like the Sugar 
maple, though darker in colour, and firmer in texture. It 
may also be easily distinguished from that tree, by the 
curious appearance of its secondary branches, which have a 
peculiar roughness, owing to the bark attaching itself in 
plates edgewise to the trunk, instead of laterally, as in the 
usual manner. The fruit is globular, somewhat resembling 
that of the buttonwood, but much rougher, and bristling 
with points. The male and female catkins appear, on 
different branches of the same tree, early in the spring. 
This tree grows in great perfection in the forests of New 
Spain. It was first described by a Spanish naturalist, Dr. 
Hernandez, who observed that a fragrant and transparent 
*N. A. Sylva, 1.315. 
