352 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



finger nail, roundish, often orbicular, kidney-shaped at base, 

 rounded at the end, with the veins prominent, of a uniform 

 dark green above, or variegated with a lighter spot and whitish 

 veins; the margin somewhat revolute; under surface perfectly 

 smooth. 



The flowers are rose-colored, or white, in pairs, the tubes of 

 the corollas, hairy within, diverging from the united ovaries. 

 The fruit, as large as a whortleberry, broader than it is long, 

 and seeming to be made of two berries grown together, side by 

 side, and crowned with their calyxes, scarlet, with a rather dry, 

 whitish, almost tasteless pulp, containing three or four, small, 

 flattened, lens-like, stony seeds. Flowers in June and July. 

 The fruit remains on through the winter, and contributes to 

 furnish food for the partridge, and other birds that remain in 

 our climate. 



FAMILY XVIII. THE HONEYSUCKLE FAMILY. CAPRIFOL1- 



A'CEJE. Jussieu. 



This family consists of climbing, trailing, or erect, woody 

 shrubs or under shrubs, and sometimes herbaceous plants, re- 

 markable for their beauty, and some of them much valued, 

 and universally cultivated for ornament. These often fragrant, 

 always beautiful plants, of which there are about eighty species, 

 are natives of the northern parts of both continents, beyond or 

 just within the tropics. The bark of many of them is astrin- 

 gent: and a species of Lonicera is used in Chili to dye black. 

 The flowers of the greater part are as remarkable for their de- 

 licious fragrance as for their beauty. The fruit is usually, in 

 some degree, emetic or purgative. 



They are distinguished by their apparently jointed stems ; 

 simple, opposite leaves, with the footstalks of each pair com- 

 monly united at base; their flowers perfect, regular, or more 

 commonly irregular, five-parted, in pairs, or heads, with com- 

 monly two bracts at the base of the flower-stalk; calyx adhe- 

 rent to the ovary, with its border five-parted; corolla tubular, 



