Addisonia 



(Plate 125) 



CELASTRUS ARTICULATUS 

 Japanese Shrubby Bitter-sweet 



Native of Japan and China 



Family CeIyASTracea^ StapP-TrbE Family 



Celastrus articulatus Thunb. Fl. Jap. 97. 1784. 

 Celastrus orbiculatus Lam. Tab. Encyc. 2: 94. 1797. 



A vigorous high-climbing shrub, bearing rather inconspicuous 

 greenish flowers and numerous golden-yellow fruits which burst 

 open, exposing the red arils of the seeds. Stems up to twenty feet 

 long, with the bark of the branches purplish or purplish gray and 

 that of the alternate widely spreading twigs purplish or yellowish 

 brown. The glabrous leaves are alternate, with petioles a half to 

 three quarters of an inch long. The blades are oblong, elliptic, or 

 obovate, to nearly orbicular, up to three inches long, abruptly 

 terminating in a short blunt point, acute at the base ; the margin is 

 crenate-serrate. The flowers are borne in few-flowered short- 

 stalked cymes in the leaf-axils; the erect calyx-lobes, spreading 

 petals, and stamens are in fives; the linear-oblong petals are much 

 longer than the short rounded lobes of the calyx; in the pistillate 

 flowers the stamens are short and are not fertile. The glabrous 

 ovary (immature in the staminate flowers) is ovate, and is narrowed 

 into a columnar style with three recurved stigmatic lobes. The 

 golden-yellow capsule is about the size of a pea and splits into three 

 valves, exposing the red arils of the seeds. The seeds are broadly 

 ellipsoid or nearly globose, brown. 



One of the most vigorous of the woody hardy cultivated vines, 

 and related to our own shrubby bitter-sweet, Celastrus scandens; 

 but it is readily distinguished by the flower- clusters borne in the 

 axils of the leaves instead of at the ends of the branchlets, as in that 

 species. It is very showy in fruit, the yellow of the opened cap- 

 sule making a striking combination with the red of the arils. The 

 fruit, however, does not become conspicuous until the fall of the 

 leaves, whereas in our native species the fruit-clusters are borne on 

 the ends of the branchlets and so are plainly visible even while the 

 foliage is present. This plant is also of more vigorous growth than 

 Celastrus scandens, and is well adapted for covering walls, old trees, 

 stony waste places, and other unsightly objects. 



The drawing was prepared from a vine growing on some small 

 trees in the rear of the Museum building of the New York Botanical 

 Garden. It was of accidental occurrence there, and perhaps or- 

 iginated from seed carried by the birds from the large specimen in 



