t886.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 109 



STAMEN OF THE DEERBERRY. 



(VACCINUM STAMINEUM, L.) 

 BY THE REV. J. L. ZABRISKIE, 



{Read June \?,th, 1886.) 



This plant is related to the Cranberries and Huckleberries. 

 There are fourteen species of Vaccinium in the Northern United 

 States. This species is one of the Huckleberries, known popu- 

 larly as the Deerberry, and sometimes as the Squaw-Huckle- 

 berry. It is a shrub, two or three feet high. The fruit is 

 globular, one-half inch in diameter, of a greenish color, rather 

 nauseous, although sweet to the taste, but possessing a most 

 agreeable aroma, as of delicious apples. 



Some time ago, I had a dozen of these berries, wrapped in 

 paper and enclosed in a book-case. For several weeks, every 

 time that book-case was opened the entire room was filled with 

 the agreeable odor of the fruit. 



The corolla of this species, instead of being an oblong tube, 

 with terminal reverted lobes, as is common in the order, is open, 

 bell-shaped, and greenish-white, or purplish. The style is slen- 

 der, and about three times the length of the corolla. The sta- 

 mens are ten, about twice the length of the corolla, standing in 

 a close bundle around the style, and of a curious form. The 

 filament of the stamen is a white strap, hairy, and having attached 

 to the inner face two large, elliptical pouch-like anthers, each 

 anther extending in a slender tube, opening at the extremity by 

 four or five ornamented lanceolate lobes. Each anther, also, is 

 furnished with a slender awn of about one-half the length of 

 the anther tube, arising from the outer and upper portion of the 

 pouch. The pair of awns, extending horizontally in opposite 

 directions, out from the longitudinal axis of the stamen, and 

 being of a sinuous form, resemble a pair of spreading ox-horns. 

 The entire surface of the anthers, also, is very prettily orna- 

 mented by hexagonal cells, each surmounted in the centre by a 

 slender prominent papilla. 



