84 
DESCRIPTION OF MEDICINAL PLANTS. 
12 ; styles linear, exserted, as many as the cells of the ovary ; 
stigmas small. Nuts coriaceous, ovoid, enclosed 2-3 to- 
gether, or solitary in the hard and thick very prickly 4- 
valved involucre. Flowers appearing later than the leaves, 
cream color. FI. June. In sandy or argillaceous soils, not 
in limestone. The foliage is collected late in summer. 
Fagus ferruginea, Ait. American Beech. Tree 75-100° high, 
with a close and smooth ash-gray bark, a light horizontal 
spray, and undivided, strongly straight-veined leaves, which 
are open and convex in the tapering bud and plaited on the 
veins. Leaves oblong-ovate, taper-pointed, distinctly and 
often coarsely pointed. Sterile flowers in small heads on 
drooping peduncles, with deciduous scale-like bracts ; calyx 
bell-shaped, 5-7 cleft; stamens 8-16, filaments slender, an- 
thers 2-celled. Fertile dowers, usually in pairs at the apex 
of a short peduncle, invested by numerous awl-shaped bract- 
lets, the inner coherent at base to form the 4-lobed involu- 
cre ; calyx-lobes 6, awl-shaped, ovary 3-celled, styles 8. 
Nuts sharply 3-sided, usually two in each urn-shaped and 
soft-prickly coriaceous involucre, which divides to below the 
middle into 4 valves. In rich, heavy soils. FI. May. The 
bark and leaves are used. 
SALIC ACEiE. (Willow Family.) 
Salix alba, L. White Willow. A tree of rapid growth, at- 
taining a height of 50-80°. Dioecious, with both kinds of 
flowers in catkins, one to each bract without perianth. 
Bracts of the catkins entire; aments borne on short lateral 
leafy branchlets; scales yellowish, falling before the cap- 
sules mature. Stamens 2 ; capsules subsessile, ovate-coni- 
cal ; leaves lanceolate, long-acuminate. Very common in 
wet, low grounds. The bark is used. 
Salix nigra, Marsh. Black Willow. Shrub or small tree. 
Leaves narrowly lanceolate, very long-attenuate from near 
the roundish or acute base to the usually curved tip, often 
downy when young, at length green and glabrous, except 
the petiole and midrib; stipules large, semicordate, pointed 
