68 PITTONIA. 
and petals only now and then numbering five or seven each. 
The flower buds display the peculiarity of not being exactly - 
orbicular, but noticeably elliptical in outline as seen from 
above, and the two sepals or segments which form each vertex 
of the ellipse are, in many of the lateral flowers, firmly co- 
herent after the expansion of the petals and even to the end 
of their existence, so that we can in these instances call the 
calyx 4-parted, the normal condition in Philadelphus. 
The six orbicular petals are not “ convolute,” two of them 
being wholly interior, two as wholly exterior, and two only 
taking the position which makes for a convolute sestivation. 
The stamens, which number more than two hundred, are 
truly filiform except at their abruptly dilated base, and they 
are somewhat indefinitely gathered into six bundles alterna- 
ting with the bases of the petals. There are traces of this 
bundling of stamens in our Pacific American species of Phila- 
delphus, where also the ovary is less coherent with the calyx, 
or more superior, than in the eastern species; and the 
technical character of Carpenteria is upon the whole weaken- 
ed rather than helped by these observations. As a genus it 
must stand, as we think, chiefly on its habit which is quite 
distinctive. 
It is a low evergreen shrub with coriaceous leaves, rather 
compact as compared with Philadelphus. Our plants, now 
at least ten years old, are only three or four feet high, and 
yet in a thoroughly healthy condition. The branches are very 
flexible and tough, while those of Philadelphus are brittle. 
The bark and leaves have a bitter taste quite in eontrast with 
the rather pleasant, mild flavor of the syringo or mock-orange. 
The flower-clusters are all terminal and long-peduncled ; the 
flowers wholly scentless and about two inches in diameter, the 
corolla being exactly rotate. The clear white of the petals, 
relieved by the yellow tufts of almost innumerable stamens 
renders it one of the most showy and ornamental shrubs of 
the order to which it belongs. 
RHAMNUS RUBRA. Branchlets slender and flexible with a 
