Mus. ANACARDIACE^. 381 



Oedek XXXVI. ANACARDIACEJE. 



By a. Gray. 



Shrubs or trees (of temperate and largely of tropical countries), with resinous 



juice, alternate dotless leaves and no stipules. Flowers small and regular, 



mostly 5-merous, symmetrical except as to number of carpels. Calyx and corolla 



imbricated or valvate in the bud. Stamens as many as petals and alternate with 



them, or sometimes twice as many, inserted with the petals .outside of or on a 



hypogynous or subperigynous disk. Ovary mainly 1 -celled but with 2 or 3 styles 



or stigmas (in the Mango simple, in the Hog Plums 3-5-celled), and a solitary 



anatropous ovule. Fruit almost always drupaceous ; seed with large embryo 



and little or no albumen ; the fiat or plano-convex cotyledons in ours accumbent 



on the radicle. — Represented only by the polymorphous and wide-spread genus 



Hhus, except as to the following. 



PistAcia MexicAna, HBK., being unknown as to flowers, is more probably a Rhus (as 

 below placed) than a solitary American member of an Old World genus. 



Veatchia Cedrosensis, Gray, Proc. Am. Acad. xx. 290, of the islands off Lower Cali- 

 fornia {Rhus Veatchiana, Kellogg), is the type of a peculiar genus with accrescent scarious petals 

 and utricular fruit.i 



ScnfNDS MoLLE, L., the well-known Pepper-tree or Chili Pepper, native of Chili and 

 Peru, long ago widely distributed and extending to the U. S. borders, is much planted as an 

 ornamental tree in S. California. 



Spondias lutea, L., the West Indian Hog Plum, may have effected a lodgment on the 

 Keys of Florida, as its nut-like 5-celled putamen is occasionally found on the beaches. 



1. RHtJS, Tourn. Sumach, &c. (The ancient Greek and Latin name 

 of the S. European species.) — Flowers polygamous or dioecious, seldom truly 

 perfect, small, white, greenish, or rarely yellow rose-color. Calyx small, 5-parted. 

 Petals 5, imbricated in the bud. Stamens 5. Ovule on a funiculus which rises 

 from the base of the cell. Embryo with a short radicle accumbent. — Inst. 611, 

 t. 381 ; L. Gen. no. 241 ; DC. Prodr. ii. 66 ; Gray, Gen. 111. ii. 157, t. 159, 160; 

 Benth. & Hook. Gen. i. 418, excl. Lithrcea. Rhus, Cotinus, & Toxicodendron^ 

 Tourn. Inst. 610, 611 ; Engler in DC. Monogr. Phan. iv., also Metopium, P.Br. 

 Jam. 177. — Trees or shrubs of varied habit, all with resinous and often milky 

 juice, in some poisonous (even the effluvium) to the skin ; bark and foliage of the 

 true Sumachs abounding in tannin, and therefore valuable in leather-dressing. 



§ 1. CoTiNus, DC. Dry and smooth drupe in its growth becoming very gib- 

 bous, the remains of the styles therefore deeply lateral : flowers in ample loose 

 panicles, polygamous ; pedicels elongating after flowering and becoming plu- 

 mose-villous : leaves simple and entire. — Prodr. ii. 67. Cotinus, Tourn. Inst. 

 610; Engler, 1. c. 349, t. 12. 



1 This species has subsequently been identified by Mr. T. S. Brandegee, Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci. 

 ser. 2, ii. 140, with the problematic Schinusf discolor of Benth. Bot. Sulph. 11, t. 9, and redescribed 

 as Veatchia discolor. 



