3. CEPHALANTHUS L.
Small trees or shrubs, with opposite or verticillate petiolate leaves, interpetiolar stipules, and scaly buds. Flowers nectariferous, yellow or creamy white, sessile in the axils of glandular bracts, in dense globose pedunculate terminal or axillary solitary or panicled heads; receptacle globose, setose; calyx-tube obpyramidal, with a short limb unequally 4 or 5-toothed or lobed; corolla tubular salver-form, divided into 4 or 5 short spreading or reflexed lobes usually furnished with a minute dark gland at the base or on the side of each sinus, puberulous on the inner surface of the tube, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens inserted on the throat of the corolla; filaments short; anthers linear-oblong, sagittate, apiculate at base; pistil of 2 carpels; ovary 2-celled; style filiform, elongated; stigma clavate, entire; ovule solitary in each cell, suspended from the apex of the cell on a short papillose funicle, anatropous. Fruit obpyramidal, coriaceous, 2-coccous. Seeds oblong, pendulous, covered at apex by a white spongy aril; embryo straight in cartilaginous albumen; cotyledons oblong, obtuse; radicle elongated, superior.
Cephalanthus with seven species is widely distributed in North and South America, and in southern and eastern Asia, and the Malay Archipelago.
The generic name, from κεφαλή and ἄνθος, relates to the capitate inflorescence.
1. [Cephalanthus occidentalis] L. Button Bush.
Leaves ovate, lanceolate or elliptic, acute, acuminate or short-pointed at apex, rounded or cuneate at base, thin, dark green on the upper surface, paler and glabrous or puberulous on the lower surface, 2′—7′ long and ½′—3½′ wide, with a stout light yellow midrib often covered below with long white hairs and 5 or 6 pairs of slender primary veins nearly parallel with the sides of the leaf; deciduous, or persistent during the winter; petioles stout, grooved, glabrous, ½′—¾′ in length; stipules minute, nearly triangular. Flowers: flower-heads 1′—1½′ in diameter on slender peduncles 1′—2′ long, usually in panicles 4′—5′ in length, their lower peduncles from the axil of upper leaves; flowers creamy white, very fragrant, opening from the middle of May in Florida and Texas to the middle of August in Canada and on the mountains of California; calyx usually 4 or occasionally 5-lobed, with short rounded lobes, and slightly villose toward the base; corolla glandular or eglandular; anthers nearly sessile, included, discharging their pollen before the flowers open; disk thin and obscure. Fruit ripening late in the autumn in heads ⅝′—¾′ in diameter, green tinged with red and ultimately dark red-brown.
A tree, occasionally 40°—50° high, with a straight tapering trunk a foot in diameter, and frequently free of limbs for 15°—20°, ascending and spreading branches, and stout branchlets with a thick pith, glabrous and marked by large oblong pale lenticels, and developed mostly in verticels of 3’s from the axillary buds of one of the upper nodes, without a terminal bud, light green when they first appear, pale reddish brown, covered with a glaucous bloom during their first winter and then marked by small semicircular leaf-scars displaying semilunate fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and connected by the persistent black stipules or by their subulate scars, darker the following season, and dark brown in their third year, the bark then beginning to separate into the large loose scales found on the large branches and on the stems of small plants; usually a shrub, only a few feet high. Winter-buds axillary, single or in pairs or in 3’s one above the other, minute, nearly immersed in the bark. Bark of large trunks dark gray-brown or often nearly black, divided by deep fissures into broad flat ridges broken on the surface into elongated narrow scales. The bark contains tannin, and has been used in the treatment of fevers and in homœopathic practice.
Distribution. Swamps and the low wet borders of ponds and streams; New Brunswick to Ontario, southern Michigan, southern Minnesota, eastern Nebraska, Kansas and western Oklahoma (near Canton, Blaine County), southward to the shores of Bay Biscayne and the Everglade Keys, Dade County, Florida, eastern Texas to the valley of the Rio Grande, southern New Mexico, and Arizona, and widely distributed in California; in Mexico and Cuba; very rarely arborescent at the north and of its largest size on the margins of river-bottoms and swamps and in pond holes in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas; ascending on the southern Appalachian Mountains to altitudes of 2500°; passing into var. pubescens Rafn., with leaves soft pubescent below especially on the midrib and veins, and pubescent petioles, inflorescence and branchlets; southern Indiana, southeastern Missouri, southern Arkansas, western Louisiana and eastern Texas to the valley of the lower Brazos River.
Occasionally cultivated in the northeastern states as an ornamental plant.