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LAURACEAE 



Family 49. LAURACEAE. 



Laurel Family. 



Aromatic trees and shrubs with alternate, entire, minutely punctate leaves, 

 without stipules. Flowers perfect or unisexual, apetalous, arranged in panicles, 

 racemes or umbellate clusters. Calyx 4— 6-parted, its petaloid segments in 2 series. 

 Stamens in 3-4 series, some of them often reduced to staminodia; anthers 2—4- 

 celled, opening by 4 uplifting valves. Pistil 1, unicarpellate, free from the calyx; 

 ovary 1-celled; style and stigma 1; ovule 1, pendulous. Fruit a drupe with a 

 smooth stone. 



A family of about 50 genera and 1,000 species, chiefly tropical. 



1. UMBELLULARIA Nutt. N. Amer. Sylva 1 : 87. 1842. 



A tree with thick evergreen leaves and small greenish-yellow flowers in axillary or 

 terminal, umbellate clusters, included before anthesis in an involucre of 4 deciduous bracts. 

 Calyx 6-parted, deciduous. Stamens 9, in 3 series of 3 each, with a fleshy 2-lobed stipitate 

 gland at base and alternating with 3 staminodia ; anthers 4-valved, the outer introrse, the 

 inner extrorse. Stigma dilated. Drupe subglobose to ovoid, subtended by the thickened 

 base of the calyx. [Name Latin, meaning a little umbel.] 



A monotypic genus peculiar to Pacific North America. 



1877. Achlys triphylla 



1878. Vancouveria hexandra 



!CD0 



1879. Vancouveria chrysantha 



1880. Vancouveria planipetala 



1881 



1881. Calycanthus occidentalis 



1882. Umbellularia californica 



