98 RHUS VERNIX. 
der them has been detached. ‘The barren and 
fertile flowers grow on different trees. The 
panicles of barren flowers are the largest and 
most branched. ‘They are furnished with short, 
oblong bractes, and downy pedicels. The ca- 
lyx has five ovate segments, and the corolla five 
eblong, sigmoid petals. The stamens are longer 
than the petals, and project through their in- 
terstices. The rudiment of a three-cleft style 
is found in the centre-—In the fertile flowers, 
the panicles of which are much smaller, the 
ealyx and petals resemble the last, while the 
centre is occupied by an oval germ, ending in 
three circular stigmas. The fruit is a bunch 
of dry berries or rather drupes of a greenish 
white, sometimes marked with slight purple veins; 
and becoming wrinkled when old. They are 
roundish, a little broadest at the upper end, and 
compressed ; containing one white, nae furrow- 
ed seed. wi 
A tree, supposed to be the same with the 
Rhus vernix, grows in Japan, and furnishes the 
celebrated black varnish of that country. 
A controversy respecting the identity of the 
Japanese and American species, was carried on in 
the forty ninth and fiftieth volumes of the London 
Philosophical transactions, by Mr. Philip Miller 
