22 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
takes a notion to set them? Could any honey go so 
well on hot corn-bread, that came not out of a bee- 
gum? 
It would be impossible within reasonable limits 
to do justice to the trees here, yet one could not 
dismiss them without a word concerning that be- 
guiling shape with the unfair name — the sourwood 
or Oxydendrum arboreum, which means the same as 
sourwood, but sounds better. This ladylike little 
tree is the most charming thing in the woods when 
its exquisite young leaves come out In the spring, 
and again In early summer when it is covered with 
drooping, handlike sprays of white flowers that look 
like lllles-of-the-valley, and give forth a fragrance 
delicate yet so penetrating that one can easily smell 
his way through the woods to a blossoming tree, 
where he will find the honey bees ahead of him. For 
in addition to its other virtues the sourwood yields 
the finest honey in the mountains, clear, delicate, 
white, and delicious. 
The botany tells us that this Oxydendrum is the 
only species of its genus, and that It Is found only 
in southeastern North America ; which is suspicious, 
since it has recently been discovered that almost if 
not all of our plants hitherto classed as monotypic 
have species in the Far East. So undoubtedly our 
pretty sourwood has an Asiatic sister who sits smil- 
ing in some corner of the Flowery Kingdom or the 
land of the Dragon or looks out over some fair 
Himalayan height. It is a pity it should suffer from 
such a name as "sourwood" just because its leaves 
