BERBEEIDE^. 291 



Okder l. BERBERIDE/E. 



Ventenat, Tableau du Regne Vegetal, iii. 83 (1799). 



Shrubs or herbs, with alternate or radical exstipulate leaves (traces of 

 stipules iu our species of Berheris). Sepals and petals 3 or 6 each 

 (in Achlys none), hypogynous. Stamens 6 or 9; anthers opening by 

 valves hinged at top. Pistil 1; style short or 0. Fruit a berry or a 

 1-celled capsule. 



1. BERBERIS, Brnvfeh (Okegon Geape. Baebeeey). Ours low 

 evergreen shrubs, with yellow inner bark and wood, and pinnate prickly 

 leaves; putting forth, early in the season, clustered terminal and axillary 

 racemes of yellow flowers. Sepals 6, subtended by 3 or more small bracts. 

 Petals 6, opposite tlie sepals. Stamens 6. Berries globose or oblong, 

 in our species dark blue, covered with a bloom. 



1. B. repens, Lindl. Bot. Reg. t. 1176 (1828). Less than a foot high: 

 leaflets 3—7, ovate, acute, dull green and glaucescent, not shining: 

 racemes few. — Sparsely wooded hills in Lake Co., and far northward and 

 eastward beyond California. 



2. B. dictyota, Jepson, Bull. Torr. Club, xviii. 319 (1891). Size of the 

 preceding but stouter: leaflets 3 — 5, rather remote, hard-coriaceous, 

 ovate, undulate, with rigidly spinescent teeth; the lower face pale green, 

 upper bright green and shining, both faces very strongly reticulate- 

 veiny. — An imperfectly known, but well marked species; the foliage 

 extremely rigid and strikingly netted-veined. Marysville Buttes, Jepson. 



3. B. Aquifolium, Pursh, Fl. i. 219 (1814); Nutt. Journ. Philad. 

 Acad. vii. 11 (1831), under Mahoiiia. Often 5 or 6 ft. high: leaflets 7—9, 

 the lowest pair distant from the stem, ovate, acvite, bright green and 

 glossy, sinuately dentate, the spinose teeth not very prominent: racemes 

 mostly terminal: fruit nearly globose.- -In the Sierra from Kern Co. 

 northward; credited to Monterey in the " Botany of California;" but we 

 doubt its occurrence there. With the herbarists the species is too often 

 mixed with B. repens. 



4. B. piuiiata, Lag. Gen. et Sp. 14 (1816). Habit of the last, but a 

 smaller shrub; leaflets thinner, more prominently prickly, and the lowest 

 pair near the base of the petiole: flowers more profuse, appearing in the 

 axils as well as at the ends of the branches : fruit oblong. — Hills of the 

 Coast Range, from Monterey northward to Marin Co. 



5. B. nervosa, Pursh, Fl. i. 219. t. 5 (1814), as to leaf only. Mahonia 

 gluniacea, DC. Syst. ii. 21 (1821). Stem simple, 1 ft. high or less, at 

 summit bearing a crown of large leaves, and many dry chaffy persistent 



