82 
DESCRIPTION OE MEDICINAL PLANTS. 
anthers. Fertile flowers 2-3 to each 3-lobed bract, without 
bractlets or calyx, each of a naked ovary, becoming a broad- 
ly-winged and scale-like nutlet, crowned with the two spread- 
ing stigmas; fruiting catkins oblong-cylindrical. The bark 
is used. The higher Cumberland and Alleghanies. FI. 
April. 
Alnus serrulata, Willd. Smooth Alder. Shrub or sometimes 
a small tree. Leaves ovate, acute at the base, sharply serrate, 
with minute teeth, thickish, green both sides, smooth or often 
downy beneath. Flowers developed in earliest spring, before 
the leaves, from mostly clustered catkins, which were formed 
theforegoing summerand have remained naked overwinter; 
sterile catkins elongated and drooping. Fertile catkins ovoid 
or oblong; the fleshy scales each 2-3 flowered with a calyx 
of 4 little scales adherent to the scales or bracts of the cat- 
kin, which are thick and woody in fruit, wedge-obovate, 
truncate, or 3-5 lobed, persistent. Ft. April. Along creeks 
or springs over the whole State. The bark is used. 
Corylus rostrata, Ait. Beaked Hazel-nut. A low shrub, 2-3° 
high. Leaves ovate or ovate-oblong, somewhat heart-shaped, 
pointed ; sterile flowers in drooping cylindrical catkins, con- 
sisting of 8 stamens with 1-celled anthers, their short fila- 
ments and pair of scaly bractlets cohering more or less with 
the inner face of the scale of the catkin. Fertile flowers 
several, in a scaly bud, each a single ovary in the axil of a 
scale or bract and accompanied by a pair of lateral bractlets; 
ovary tipped with a short limb of the adherent calyx, incom- 
pletely 2-celled with 2 pendulous ovules, one of them sterile. 
Involucre of united bracts much prolonged above the nut 
into a narrow, tubular beak, which is densely beset with 
short bristly hairs. Those hairs or spiculse are used as an 
effective anthelmintic, equally efficacious and harmless as 
cowhage (Dolichos pruriens.) 
Qnercus alba, L. White-oak. Large tree with pale and often 
scaly bark. Mature leaves, smooth, pale or glaucus under- 
neath, bright green above, obovate-oblong, obliquely cut 
