A low tree, from fifteen to twenty-five feet in height, rarely more,
and from five to six inches diameter at base; very much branched,
the young branches and stems tomentose, and garnished with deciduous
stipules. Stems from a single root, numerous. Leaves opposite,
four or five inches long, one and a half to two broad, light siskin
green underneath; petioles and one inch of the costa above and
below, hyacinth-red, very pubescent. Flowers about one and a half
inch long, numerous, supported on terminal corymbs. Limb of the
corolla revolute, very pubescent, covered with minute carmine-red
streaks or dots, anthers brownish, filaments white, pistils yellow.
Peduncles and corymb fastigiate, mountain-green and very pubescent.
Young flower-buds ash-grey, larger ones yellow and streaked with
dull red, all densely pubescent. Calix pubescent, calicine segments
channelled and angular. At costa, whitish or straw-yellow, tinged
at the edges with carmine-red. One, sometimes two of the calicine
segments dilated into large bracteiform appendages, reticulately veined
with green beneath, veined with red above, and cupped. Capsule
round, compressed centrally, thin, cartilaginous, with a deciduous
pellicle. Seeds numerous, round or irregularly angular, and alated.
Native of Georgia, on the banks of St. Mary; found also from New
river, South Carolina, along the sea coast to Florida;* and according
to the younger Michaux, “ a cool and shady exposure appears
the most favourable to its growth.”f “ In sphagnous swamps, from
* Elliott. f North Am. Sylva, vol. ii. p. 260,
Carolina to Florida, usually not far from the sea coast.”* “ In wet
and boggy soil.”t
This interesting little tree, it is generally supposed was discovered
by Michaux, sen. He was certainly the first botanist who described
it from specimens found in 1791 on St. Mary’s river, Georgia.
Yet in the herbarium of the younger Linnseus, specimens have
been found, which must consequently have been collected prior to
Michaux’s visit to North America, and it is supposed by European
botanists that those specimens had been transmitted by the elder
John Bartram, (the king’s botanist.) Indeed, the name Bartramia
was designed for it. Georgia bark was first introduced into England
by the late Mr. John Fraser, in 1786, where it is only a greenhouse
plant. Michaux gave it the name it bears, in honour of general
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, of South Carolina, a gentleman, who,
to use the words of Mr. Elliott, % “ amidst the avocations of a long
life, actively and honourably devoted to the service of his country,
has paid much attention to its botany.” The affinity of the Georgia
bark with the different species of Cinchona, has been remarked by
many botanists; but Michaux deemed it sufficiently at variance with
that genus in its fruit, to justify a severation. Whatever may be the
validity of the generic character, established by him, as separating
Pinckneya from Cinchona, it seems conceded by botanists that the
* Nuttall. f Elliott. | Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia.