48 
DESCRIPTION OF MEDICINAL PLANTS. 
slender, its apex (as in Pyrola) forming a sort of ring or 
corolla around and partly adnate to, the 5 little lobes of the 
stigma. Capsule depressed-globular, 5-lobed, 5-celled, many- 
seeded. It is very abundant in the Cumberland and Alle- 
ghany Mountains. It is strictly bound to silicious soil and 
eschews limestone. It deserves cultivation in the flower- 
garden, but is very sensitive to transplantation. FI. early 
spring. The leaves are collected. 
Gaultheria procumbens, L. Wintergreen. A small undershrub 
of creeping and decumbent habit, its slender but ligneous 
stems extensively creeping, generally underground, sending 
up flowering shoots a span high ; leaves crowded toward the 
top, obovate and oval, mucronate, more or less serrulate 
with bristly-tipped teeth, pedicels mostly solitary in the axils, 
2-bracteolate close under the calyx. Calyx 5-cleft, its lobes 
imbricated, corolla short-campanulate, 5-lobed; stamens 10; 
filaments dilated toward the base, glabrous; apex of the 
anthers obscurely 4-pointed. The u baccate calyx/’ enclosing 
the capsule, representing a red berry, which, with the foliage, 
is aromatic tasted, with flavor of sweet birch, but warmer. 
FI. June-July. In inexhaustible quantity throughout the 
higher mountains of East Tennessee. Collect the herb, from 
which an essential oil is distilled. 01. Gaultherise. 
Oxydendrum arboreum, DC. Sour- wood. Sorrel-tree. Tree 
15-40° high ; leaves membranaceous and deciduous, oblong 
or lanceolate, 4-6' long, acuminate, serrulate, glabrous, or at 
first glaucous, veiny, slender petioled ; inflorescence a panicle 
of many-flowered racemes terminating in the leafy shoots of 
the season, appearing in the early summer, flowers tardily 
opening. Calyx short, naked at the base; corolla from cyl- 
indraceous to ovate-conical 3" long, white, minutely pubes- 
cent. Anthers linear, unappendaged ; the cells opening by 
a long chink. Capsule ovoid-pyramidal. Seeds all erect, 
scobiform. Brads and bractlets minute and deciduous. 
Throughout the State in siliceous or argillaceous soils, never 
in limestone. The leaves are used. 
