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united into a ring with as many short separate styles and forming in 
fruit a depressed globose 5 to 12-celled berry with a single vertical seed 
in each cell. 
1. P. decandra L. (COMMON POKE or SCOKE, GARGET, PIGEON BERRY, ) Smooth, 
6 to 30 dm. high, with a rather unpleasant odor, and a very large poisonous root: 
calyx white: stamens and styles 10: ovary green: berries purple, with crimson 
juice, ripe in autumn,—Throughout central Texas, 
BATIDEZ. 
A family represented by a single genus and species of wholly doubtful 
affinity.x—A fleshy maritime shrub. 
1. BATIS P. Browne. 
A low seaside shrub, with opposite entire fleshy leaves without sti- 
pules, dicecious bracteate flowers in oblong axillary sessile ament-like 
spikes, staminate flowers free and with a campanulate 2-lipped calyx, 
~ stamens alternate with the 4 petals, the pistillate flowers 8 to 12 united 
into a fleshy spike without a perianth, 4-celled coherent ovaries with a 
single ovule in each cell, and a thick capitate sessile stigma. 
1. B. maritima L. Glabrous: stems branched and straggling, 9 to 12 dm, long: 
leaves linear to ovate-oblong (2.5 em. long): spikes solitary in the axils: pistillate 
spike elongated in fruit: bracts entire, in 4 vertical rows: pet tals white: stamens 
exserted: fruit a spongy pericarp.—On the beach at Brazos Santiago. 
POLYGONACEA. (BuUCKWHEAT FAMILY.) 
Herbaceous or woody plants, with alternate entire leaves, stipules in 
the form of sheaths above the swollen joints of the stem (or none), 
mostly perfect flowers on jointed pedicels, a more or less persistent 3 
to 6-cleft calyx, a 1-celled ovary with 2 or 3 styles or stigmas and a 
single erect seed, 4 to 9 stamens, and fruit a compressed or 3 or 4-angled 
or winged achene. 
* Flowers involucrate: stamens 9: stipules none. 
1. Briogonum. Involucre with several exserted flowers: calyx 6-cleft: styles 3, 
with capitate stigma. 
* * Plowers without involucre: stamens 4 to 8: stipular sheaths present. 
+ Sepals 5 (sometimes 4), equal and ercet in fruit: achene triangular or lenticular. 
2, Polygonum, Styles 2 or 3: stigmas capitate. 
+ + Sepals 4 to 6, the outer row retlexed, the inner crect and enlarged in fruit. 
3. Oxyria. Sepals 4: stigmas 2, tufted: achene orbicular-winged: leaves reni- 
form. 
4, Rumex. Sepals 6: stigmas 3, tufted. 
1. BRIOGONUM Michx. 
Herbaceous or somewhat woody plants, with radical or alternate or 
verticillate leaves, involucre (campanulate or turbinate or oblong) 4 to 
8.toothed or lobed (lobes pointless), and the colored perianth inclosing 
the 3-angled (sometimes 3-winged) achene, 
