CELASTRACES. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. ) 
EVONYMUS. 
FLoweErs perfect or polygamo-triecious; calyx 4 to 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in 
estivation ; petals 4 or 5, inserted under the margin of the disk, imbricatcd in estiva- 
tion; ovary 3 to 5-celled; ovules usually 2 in each cell, ascending or resupinate. Fruit 
capsular, 3 to 5-celled ; secds surrounded by a colored aril. 
Evonymus, Linneus, Gen. 29. — Adanson, Fam. PI. ii. Bentham & Hooker, Gen. i. 360, 997. — Baillon, Hist. Fl. 
304.— A. L. de Jussieu, Gen. 377.— Endlicher, Gen. vi. 30. 
1086. — Meisner, Gen. 68. — Gray, Gen. Jil. ii. 187.— Vyenomus, Presl, Bot. Bemerk. 32. 
Melanocarya, Turezaninow, Bull. Mose. xxxi., i. 453. 
Small trees or shrubs, generally glabrous, sometimes trailing or climbing, with fibrous roots, usually 
square, sometimes terete, often verrucose branchlets, bitter drastic bark, and slender obtuse or acuminate 
buds. Leaves opposite, petiolate, entire, crenate or dentate, deciduous or persistent; stipules minute, 
eaducous. Flowers in dichotomous axillary cymes, usuaily few-flowered, rarely one-flowered. Calyx- 
lobes spreading or recurved. Disk thick and fleshy, cohering with and filling the short tube of the 
calyx, flat, four or five-angled or lobed, closely surrounding and adherent to the ovary. Petals inserted 
in the sinuses of the calyx under the free border of the disk, spreading, entire, dentate or rarely fimbri- 
ate, much longer than the calyx-lobes, greenish white or purple, deciduous. Stamens as many as the 
petals and alternate with them, inserted on the summit or rarely on the margin of the disk; filaments 
very short, subulate, erect or recurved at the apex; anthers didymous, introrse, two-celled, the cells 
nearly parallel or spreading below, opening longitudinally. Ovary immersed in and confluent with the 
disk ; style very short, terminating in a depressed or three to five-lobed stigma; ovules usually two in 
each cell, rarely four or more, anatropous, ascending from the central angle, the raphe ventral, the 
micropyle inferior; or pendulous, the raphe then dorsal, the micropyle superior. Fruit fleshy, three to 
five-lobed, angled or winged, smooth, verrucose or echinate, loculicidally three to five-valved, the valves 
septiferous on their middle. Seeds two, or more commonly by abortion solitary in each cell, ascend- 
ing, or resupinate and suspended; aril red or purple; testa chartaceous; albumen fleshy. Embryo 
axile ; cotyledons broad, coriaceous, parallel with the raphe; the radicle short, inferior or superior.’ 
The genus Evonymus is widely distributed through the northern hemisphere, extending south of 
the equator to the islands of the Indian Archipelago and to Australia. Botanists now distinguish 
about forty species, the largest number occurring in the tropical regions of southern Asia,’ in China? 
and in Japan.* Several species are found as far south as the mountains of Ceylon ;° one of the 
Indian species occurs also in Sumatra and in Java,’ and one species has been detected in northeastern 
1 The flowers of Evonymus Europeus were found by Darwin 3 Bentham, Fl. Hongk. 62.— Forbes & Hemsley, Jour. Linn. 
(Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species, 287) to be — Soc. xxiii. 118. 
of three forms, one with perfectly developed stamens and pistils, + Franchet & Savatier, Enum. Pl. Jap. i. 78.— Maximowicz, 
one with semi-sterile hermaphrodite flowers, and a third with per- Bull. Acad. Sci. St. Petersbourg, xxvii. 241 (Meél. Biol. xi. 177). 
fect pistils and rudimentary anthers. The flowers of the North 5 Thwaites, Enum. Pl. Zeylan. 73. 
American species, so far as I have been able to observe them, are § Evonymus Javanicus, Blume, Bijdr. Fl. Ned. Ind. 1146. — Ben- 
perect: nett, Pl. Jav. Rar. 130, t. 28. — Miquel, Fl. Ind. Bat. i., ii. 588. 
2 Hooker f. Fl. Brit. Ind. i. 607. 
