Low pubescent deciduous shrub, with fragrant leaves, fruit and twigs. Fruit a conical hard smooth nut, surrounded by 8 long linear bracts persisting as a sort of bur.

Fig. 40. Comptonia peregrina.

1. C. peregrina (L.) Coult. Sweet Fern. (Myrica asplenifolia L.). A shrub 3-6 dm. high, the branches erect or spreading; twigs slender, resinous-dotted when young; pith small, solitary, sessile, ovoid, with about four exposed scales; end-bud absent; leaf-scars alternate, 3-sided, somewhat raised; bundle-traces 3; stipule-scars small. The leaves are sweet-scented and fern-like in appearance; they are deciduous in winter but a few withered ones may generally be found. Open woodlands and barrens, Nova Scotia to Manitoba, south to Minnesota, Indiana and in the mountains to Georgia and Tennessee (Fig. 40).