244 OLEACEAE 



OLEACEAE 

 The Olive Family 



The olive family consists of trees, shrubs and a few almost 

 herbaceous plants with opposite or, rarely, alternate, simple 

 or pinnately compound leaves without stipules. The regular 

 flowers are perfect, polygamous or dioecious, and usually 

 have 2 to 4 sepals and 2 to 4 petals. There usually are 2 

 stamens inserted on the corolla tube, and the superior, 

 2-celled ovary develops into a fruit, which may be a capsule, 

 a samara, a berry or a drupe. 



The more than 500 species in this family, representing 20 

 or more genera, are widely distributed in temperate and 

 tropical regions. Of the shrubby forms only one is native in 

 Illinois, but both the common Lilac, Syringa vulgaris Linnaeus, 

 and the common Privet, Ligustrum vulgare Linnaeus, occur in 

 the state as occasional escapes from cultivation. 



FOREST! ERA Poiret 

 The Swamp Privets 



The swamp privets are shrubs with opposite, simple, toothed 

 or entire leaves, which may be deciduous or persistent, and 

 with small, yellow or greenish flowers borne before the leaves 

 open in short racemes or panicles in the axils of leaves of the 

 preceding season. There is either no calyx or a minute, 4-toothed 

 calyx, and no corolla or at most 1 or 2 small, soon deciduous 

 petals. There are 2 to 4 stamens, and the 2-celled ovary de- 

 velops into an oblong to nearly globose drupe, which contains 

 1 seed, or less often 2 seeds. 



There are about 15 species of swamp privet, which range 

 through the southern United States to Mexico, Central America 

 and Brazil. Only the following occurs in Illinois. 



FORESTIERA ACUMINATA (Michaux) Poiret 



Swamp Privet 



The Swamp Privet, fig. 64, is a tall, spreading shrub 12 to 

 15 feet high, or rarely a tree of much greater height, with small, 

 spreading branches and slender, light brown branchlets marked 

 by numerous lenticels. Lateral twigs in the angles of the leaves 



