184 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
leaves of the perianth, absent in the female flowers. Ovary 1-celled, 
sessile, contained within the tube of the filaments, 3-celled; ovules 
2 in each cell; style thick; stigma peltate, entire, or 3-lobed in the 
abortive ovary of the male flowers. Berry globose, 1- or 2-seeded. 
Seeds hemispherical, plano-conyex ; testa firm, pale-fuscous. 
Shrubs with simple or branched stems and alternate opposite or 
verticillate scalelike leaves, from the axils of which the coriaceous 
evergreen leaflike branches (cladodia) are produced. Flowers sub- 
sessile, minute, with scarious bracts, situated near the middle of the 
cladodia, so that they spring from what appear to be the leaves of the 
plant. 
The derivation of the name of this genus scems to be from russo colore, because of 
the carnation colour of its berries. 
SPECIES I1—RUSCUS ACULEATUS. Lim. 
Pirate MDXVI. 
Reich. Ic. F). Germ. et Helv. Vol. X. Tab. CCCCXXXVII. Fig. 968. 
Billot, ¥). Gall. et Germ. Exsice. No. 3228. 
Stem shrubby, much branched. Cladodia evergreen, rather small, 
ovate, or lanceolate-acuminate, spinous-pointed, rigid, bearing on their 
upper surface between the base and the middle one or two flowers, with 
a triangular-subulate scarious bract at the base, within which are 
several shorter and broader wholly scarious bracteoles. 
In woods, copses, and borders of fields. Rather local, but not un- 
common in the south of England, but rare in the north, and perhaps 
not native in many of its stations; Suffolk, Glamorgan, and Leicester 
probably being its northern limit as an indigenous plant. Naturalised 
in Scotland; and said to grow in Cork and Kerry, Ireland. 
England, [Scotland,] Ireland (?). Shrub. Early Spring. 
Rootstock creeping, woody, with somewhat wiry thick radical fibres, 
and scarious scales towards the apex. Young shoots enveloped in 
scarious scales at the base, but after the first year these scales decay 
and leave the lower half of the stem bare and green. Cladodia } to 1} 
inch long, those of the male plant much narrower than those of the 
female, a fact first pointed out, I believe, by Mr. G. Worthington Smith. 
In both male and female plants the cladodia are slightly twisted at 
their base, terminating in a yellowish spine and placed in the axil of a 
lanceolate-subulate scarious scalelike deciduous leaf. Peduncles of 
the flowers adnate to the upper surface of the cladodium, so that the 
flower seems to spring from the leaflike branch. Perianth scarcely 4 
inch across, yellowish-green; the three outer segments oblong, in-— 
