THYMELEACEJE. (MEZEREUM FAMILY.) 395 
Order 88. THYMELEACEiE. (Mezereum Family.) 
Shrubs, with acrid and very tough (not aromatic) bark, 
entire leaves, and perfect flowers with a regular and simple 
petal-like calyx, bearing usually twice as many stamens as 
its lobes, free from the 1-celled and 1 -ovuled ovary, which 
forms a berry-like drupe in fruit, with a single suspended 
anatropous seed. Embryo large and almond-like : albumen 
little or none. — Represented in North America only by 
the genus 
1. DIRCA, L. Leather wood. Moose-wood. 
Calyx petal-like, tubular-funnel-shaped, truncate, the border 
wavy or obscurely about 4-toothed. Stamens long and slender, 
inserted on the calyx above the middle, exserted, the alternate 
ones longer. Style thread-form: stigma capitate. Drupe oval 
(reddish).— A much-branched bush, with jointed branchlets, oval- 
obovate alternate leaves, at length smooth, deciduous, on very 
short petioles, the bases of which conceal the buds of the next 
season. Flowers light yellow, preceding the leaves, 3 in a clus¬ 
ter from a dark-hairy bud, from which soon after proceeds a leafy 
branch. (A/pio;, the name of a fountain near Thebes, applied by 
Linnaeus to this North American genu^ir no imaginable rea¬ 
son, unless because the bush frequently grows in the neighbour¬ 
hood of rivulets.) 
1. D. palustris, L. — Damp rich woods, seldom in swamps' 
common northward. April. — Shrub 2° - 5° high ; the wood white, 
soft and very brittle, but the fibrous bark remarkably tough, used by 
the Indians for thongs, whence the popular names. In N. New Eng- 
land also called Wicopy. 
Order 89. EEiEAGJYACEJE. (Oleaster Family.) 
Shrubs or small trees , with silvery-scurfy leaves and most¬ 
ly dicecious flowers ; further distinguished from the Meze¬ 
reum Family by the ascending albuminous seed, and the 
calyx-tube becoming pulpy and berry-like in fruit inclos¬ 
ing the achenium; and from the two following by the calyx- 
tube not cohering with the ovary, &c. 
