396 ELASAGNACEiE. (OLEASTER FAMILY.) 
1* 8IIEP1IERDIA, Nutt Shepherdia. 
Flowers dicecious ; the sterile with a 4-parted calyx (valvate in 
the bud) and 8 stamens, alternating with as many processes of the 
thick disk : fertile with an urn-shaped 4-cleft calyx, inclosing the 
ovary (the orifice closed by the teeth of the disk), and becoming 
berry-like in fruit. Style slender : stigma 1-sided. — Leaves op¬ 
posite, entire, deciduous ; the small flowers nearly sessile in their 
axils on the branchlets, clustered, or the fertile solitary. (Named 
for John Shepherd, formerly curator of the Liverpool Botanic 
Garden.) 
1. S* Canadensis, Nutt. (Canadian Shepherdia.) Leaves 
elliptical or somewhat ovate, nearly naked and green above, silvery- 
downy and scurfy with rusty scales underneath; fruit yellowish.— 
Rocky or gravelly banks, W. Vermont to Wisconsin northward. 
May. — A straggling shrub, 2P-GP high ; the branchlets, young leaves, 
yellowish flowers, &c., covered with the rusty scales. Fruit insipid. 
S. argentea, Nutt., of Upper Missouri, which has narrower en¬ 
tirely silvery leaves, and edible, acid, scarlet fruit, is somewhat culti¬ 
vated for ornament; as also is the Oleaster (Eltedgnus horUnsis ), 
Order 90. NYSSACEJE. (Tupelo Family.) 
Trees , with dicecious-polygamous flowers , consisting only 
of the genus Nyssa, which has commonly been appended to 
the Sandalwood Family, from which it differs in the solita¬ 
ry ovule of the ordinary structure, suspended from the top 
of the cell. 
NYSSA, L. Tupelo. Pepperidge. 
Sterile flowers with a 5-paTted calyx, and about 10 stamens on 
the outside of a convex disk. Perfect or fertile flowers with the 
tube of the calyx adherent to the 1-celled ovary r the border 5 -part- 
ed and deciduous : stamens 5, perfect or imperfect: style elongat¬ 
ed, revolute, stigmatic down one side. Fruit an oval or oblong 
berry-like drupe: endocarp grooved. Seed anatropous, with a 
straight embryo in sparing albumen : cotyledons leafy. — Trees 
with alternate deciduous leaves, which are smooth and shining 
above (and turn scarlet in autumn), and axillary peduncles, bear¬ 
ing sterile flowers in capitate clusters or racemes, and the fertile 
