S. Virgínica.
Handsome shrub or small tree (10 to 15 ft.), wild south in the mountains, and hardy and cultivated as far north as New York City without protection. In Massachusetts it needs some sheltered position.
2. Stuártia Virgínica, Cav. (Virginia Stuartia.) Leaves elliptic-ovate, acuminate at both ends, 2 in. long, 1 in. wide, thin, serrate, silky pubescent beneath. Flowers white with purple filaments and blue anthers. Pod globular and blunt; ripe in October. A beautiful shrub rather than tree (8 to 12 ft.), wild in Virginia and south; hardy as far north as Washington.
Genus 8. GORDÒNIA.
Shrubs or small trees with alternate, simple, feather-veined leaves. Flowers large (3 to 4 in. wide), white, showy, solitary in the axils of the leaves. Blooming in summer. Fruit a dry, dehiscent, conical-pointed, 5-celled capsule with 10 to 30 seeds, ripe in the autumn.
G. Lasiánthus.
1. Gordònia Lasiánthus, L. (Loblolly Bay.) Leaves thick, evergreen, lanceolate-oblong, minutely serrate, nearly sessile, smooth and shining on both sides. The large, solitary, sweet-scented, axillary flowers on peduncles half as long as the leaves. A large tree (30 to 70 ft. high) in the south (wild in southern Virginia), and cultivated as far north as central Pennsylvania, without protection; at St. Louis and Boston it needs protection. Wood of a reddish color, light and brittle.
