=Horticultural Value.=--Hardy throughout New England, adapting itself to a great variety of situations, but preferring a soil that is constantly moist. Nursery or good collected plants are easily transplanted. A disease, similar in its effect to the pear blight, so often disfigures it that it is not desirable for use in important plantations. [Illustration: PLATE LXXX.--Cornus alternifolia.] 1. Winter buds. 2. Flowering branch. 3. Flower with one petal and two stamens removed, side view. 4. Flower, view from above. 5. Fruiting branch. =Nyssa sylvatica, Marsh.= TUPELO. SOUR GUM. PEPPERIDGE. =Habitat and Range.=--In rich, moist soil, in swamps and on the borders of rivers and ponds. Ontario. Maine,--Waterville on the Kennebec, the most northern station yet reported (Dr. Ezekiel Holmes); New Hampshire,--most common in the Merrimac valley, seldom seen north of the White mountains; Vermont,--occasional; Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut,--rather common. South to Florida; west to Michigan, Missouri, and Texas. =Habit.=--Tree 20-50 feet high, with a trunk diameter of 1-2 feet, rising in the forest to the height of 60-80 feet; attaining greater dimensions farther south; lower branches horizontal or declining, often touching the ground at their tips, the upper horizontal or slightly rising, angular, repeatedly subdividing; branchlets very numerous, short and stiff, making a flat spray; head extremely variable, unique in picturesqueness of outline; usually broad-spreading, flat-topped or somewhat rounded; often reduced in Nantucket and upon the southern shore of Cape Cod to a shrub or small tree of 10-15 feet in height, forming low, dense, tangled thickets. Foliage very abundant, dark lustrous green, turning early in the fall to a brilliant crimson. =Bark.=--Trunk of young trees grayish-white, with irregular and shallow striations, in old trees darker, breaking up into somewhat hexagonal or lozenge-shaped scales; branches smooth and brown; season's shoots reddish-green, with a few minute dots. =Winter Buds and Leaves.=--Buds ovoid, 1/8-1/4 inch long, obtuse. Leaves simple, irregularly alternate, often apparently whorled when clustered at the ends of the shoots, 2-5 inches long, one-half as wide; at first bright green beneath, dullish-green above, becoming dark glossy green above, paler beneath, obovate or oblanceolate to oval; entire, few or obscurely toothed, or wavy-margined above the center; apex more or less abruptly acute; base acutish; firm, smooth, finely sub-veined; stem short, flat, grooved, minutely ciliate, at least when young; stipules none.