Shrubs, with alternate simple pinnate or pinnatifid mainly stipulate leaves. Flowers terminal or axillary, racemose, cymose, corymbose or paniculate, white or pink, perfect. Calyx persistent, its tube mainly campanulate, 4-5-lobed. Petals 4-5, inserted on the calyx, short-clawed. Stamens 20-60, distinct, inserted on the calyx; filaments filiform; anthers didymous. Disk adnate to the calyx-tube. Pistils commonly 5 (rarely 1-8), superior, sessile or short-stipitate, alternate with the calxy-lobes. Stigmas capitate or discoid; ovules 2-00. Follicles usually 5, not inflated, dehiscent along 1 suture. Seeds linear, pendulous, the testa dull; endosperm none. [Greek, twisting, the pods twisted in some species.]

About 70 species, natives of the north temperate zone. Besides the following, about 12 others occur in the southern and western parts of North America. Type species: Spiraea salicifolia L.

1. Spiraea Latifòlia (Ait.) Borkh. American Meadow-Sweet. Quaker Lady

Fig. 2215

S. salicifolia latifolia Ait. Hort. Kew. 2: 198. 1789. S. latifolia Borkh. Handb. Forstbot. 1871. 1803.

An erect shrub, 2°-6° high, simple, or branched above, nearly glabrous, the stems reddish or purplish. Leaves petioled, broadly oblanceolate or obovate, glabrous or very nearly so, sharply and rather coarsely serrate, especially above the middle, 1'-2' long, 4"-18" wide, or on young shoots much larger, obtuse or acutish at the apex, cuneate to rounded at the base, pale beneath; stipules deciduous or none; flowers white or pinkish-tinged, 2"-3" broad, in dense terminal panicles; follicles glabrous.

In moist or rocky ground, Newfoundland to Saskatchewan, Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Called also queen-of-the-meadow. Spice hard-hack. June-Aug.

Included in our first edition in the description of the Asiatic S. salicifolia L., which has pubescent inflorescence, pink flowers and narrower oblong leaves; it is sometimes cultivated and has escaped to roadsides in northern New York.