This section is from the book "Harper's Guide To Wild Flowers", by Caroline A. Creevey. Also available from Amazon: Harper's Guide To Wild Flowers.
Family, Calycanthus. Color, brown or purplish. Petals and sepals many, joined to the top of the calyx-tube, narrow, thick. Stamens, many, some of them without anthers. Pistils, springing from within the calyx-tube. This cup enlarges, and when ripe, incloses the achenes. Flowers, single, at the ends of leafy shoots. When crushed they give out the fragrance of a strawberry. Leaves, opposite, entire, oval, downy underneath, smooth above, dark green. April to August.
A shrub 4 to 8 feet high, thickly branching, known in the
North mostly as a cultivated garden shrub; indigenous from Virginia to North Carolina and westward, growing in rich soilon on hillsides.
C. fertilis. - A similar species with unseen ted flowers, found in the Alleghany Mountains. Its fruit is said to be poisonous to sheep.
 
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