officinale. The female flowers have twelve staminodes in three rows of six, three, and three; only six staminodes in two rows of three each occurring in the American species.
There is a tree of this species, 10 feet high, growing in the Coombe Wood nursery, which was raised from seed sent by Wilson in 1900. It has made wonderful growth during the past summer, and is very handsome. It differs from the American species in having glabrous non-ciliate leaves, which are very lustrous on the upper surface; and the young branchlets are also devoid of pubescence.
SASSAFRAS OFFICINALE, Sassafras
- Sassafras officinale, Nees ab Esenbeck u. Ebermaier, loc. cit.; Bentley and Trimen, Medicinal Plants, iii, 220 (1880).
- Sassafras Sassafras, Karsten, Pharm. Med. Bot. 505 (1882); Sargent, Silva N. Amer. vii. 17, tt. 304, 305 (1895), and Trees N. Amer. 337 (1905).
- Sassafras variifolium, O. Kuntze, Rev. Gen. Pl. ii. 574 (1891); Sargent, in Bot. Gazette, xliv. 226 (1907).
- Laurus Sassafras, Linnæus, Sp. Pl. 371 (1753); Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. iii. 1301 (1838).
A tree, attaining in America 90 feet in height and 18 feet in girth. Bark,’ according to Sargent, dark red-brown, deeply and irregularly divided into broad scaly ridges. Young shoots green or reddish, pubescent when young, becoming glabrous, remaining green in the second year. Leaves (Plate 199, Fig. 5) deciduous, entire, or two- to three-lobed; the entire leaves oval with an obtuse apex and cuneate base ; the others obovate, with a large triangular or oblong lobe on one or both sides, directed forwards and outwards ; margin entire or repand, ciliate; upper surface dark green with a scattered short pubescence; lower surface pale with a long pubescence, often falling by the end of summer; petiole, 1 to 2 inches long, pubescent. The nerves are pinnate, the two lowest arising near the base of the leaf, running nearly parallel with the margin, and ending in the lobes when these are present.
Berry * gives an account with illustrations of the extraordinary variation which occurs in the leaves of wild trees growing in America. He has found leaves with four, five, and even six lobes.
Seedling
Out of some seed gathered by Elwes at the Arnold Arboretum late in Septem- ber and sown at Colesborne in October 1904, only one germinated in the following June, and the seedling showed the following characters in August :—The cotyledons remain in the seed-case, the young stem emerging between them after the splitting of the seed into two halves. The terete glabrous and reddish stem first gives off alternately two minute scales, which are succeeded by true leaves ; the first, } inch long, arising 1½ inch above the ground, is half-oval in shape, one side of the leaf
1 In cultivated trees in England the bark is grey and fissured into longitudinal narrow ridges.
2 Bot, Gazette, xxxiv. 426 (1902).
