The Pepperbush (Clethra), of which three species
are hardy in the Arnold Arboretum, is perhaps the
most beautiful group of native shrubs which flower
from mid-July. The most common is Clethra a&i/-
folia, a denizen of swamp borders and moist places in
the neighborhood of the coast from Maine to Florida.
As usually seen it is a bush from four to six feet tall, with
white, fragrant flowers borne in erect, terminal com-
pound clusters. Unfortunately the leaves are often
disfigured by attacks of red spider. A second species
(C. tomentosa) is native of Florida and flowers two
or three weeks later than the preceding from which
it differs chiefly in the covering of white hairs on the
lower surface of the leaves. The third (C. acuminata)
is an inhabitant of the forests of the southern Ap-



MIDSEASON FLOWERING TREES AND SHRUBS 47

palachian Mountains and is a less desirable garden o t /
plant. A fourth species (C canescens)^ hardy in the
vicinity of Boston, hails from Japan and exceeds
in beauty any of the American kinds, but unfortu-
nately it does not readily make itself at home with
us. The inflorescence is larger than in the American
species and the plant grows to a greater size. As I
write I have in mind a fine specimen fully fourteen
feet high, which is growing on a windswept comer in
a garden at Winchester, Mass. Every year each
branchlet of this bush terminates in large clusters
of fragrant white flowers. In Japan this Pepper-
bush is widely distributed and in moist forests is
often a tree forty feet tall with a smooth gray-brown
trunk five feet and more in girth.
