CELASTRACLE. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 11 
EVONYMUS ATROPURPUREUS. 
Burning Bush. Wahoo. 
Parts of the flower usually in 4’s; ovules ascending, the raphe ventral. 
smooth, deeply lobed. 
Evonymus atropurpureus, Jacquin, Hort. Vind. ii. 55, 
t. 120. — Lamarck, Dict. ii. 573; Ill. ii. 98. — Schmidt, 
Oestr. Baum. ii. 20, t. 73. — Willdenow, Spec. i. 1132; 
Enum. 256.— Michaux, Fl. Bor.-Am. i. 155. — Per- 
soon, Syn. i. 243. — Nouveau Duhamel, iii. 26. — Des- 
fontaines, Hist. Arb. ii. 356.— Pursh, #7. Am. Sept. i. 
168. — Turpin, Dict. Sci. Nat. xvii. 532, t. 272. — Nut- 
tall, Gen. 155.— Roemer & Schultes, Syst. v. 466. — 
Fruit 
rey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. i. 257. — Dietrich, Syn. i. 819. — 
Griffith, Med. Bot. 219, f. 112. — Darlington, Fl. Cestr. 
ed. 3, 48.— Baillon, Bull. Soc. Bot. France, v. 256, 
314.— Chapman, F7. 76. — Curtis, Rep. Geolog. Surv. N. 
Car. 1860, iii. 102.— Koch, Dendr. i. 629. — Sargent, 
Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 38. — Tre- 
lease, Trans. St. Louis Acad. v. 353. — Watson & Coulter, 
Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 110. 
Hayne, Dendr. Fil. 24. — Elliott, Sk. i. 293. — De Can- HE. Carolinensis, Marshall, Arbust. Am. 43. 
dolle, Prodr. ii. 4. — Torrey, Fl. N. Y.i.141.—Spren- E. latifolius, Marshall, Ardust. Am. 44 (not Scopoli). — 
gel, Syst. i. 788.— Don, Gen. Syst. ii. 5.— Spach, Hist. Agardh, Theor. et Syst. Pl. t. 22, f. 4. 
Veg. ii. 407. — Loudon, Arb. Brit. ii. 499, £. 167. — Tor- 
A small slender tree, growing rarely to a height of twenty or twenty-five feet, with spreading 
branches ; or more often a shrub six to ten feet high. The trunk, which does not often attain a greater 
diameter than six or seven inches, is covered with thin ashy gray fluted bark, the surface separating 
into minute scales. The branchlets are terete, slender, and marked with prominent leaf-scars which 
are white during the first winter; they are covered with dark purple-brown bark, which becomes lighter 
colored in the second season, and which is often beset with small crowded lenticels. The winter-buds 
are an eighth of an inch long, acute and protected by narrow purple apiculate scales with scarious 
margins and covered with a glaucous bloom. The leaves are elliptical or ovate, acuminate, minutely 
serrate or biserrate, membranaceous, puberulous on the lower surface, two to five inches long and 
one to two inches broad; they are gradually contracted at the base into stout petioles half an inch to 
nearly an inch long, and are furnished with stout midribs and primary veins. They turn pale yellow 
in the autumn and fall in October. The twice or thrice dichotomous cymes are usually seven to fifteen- 
flowered, and are produced on slender peduncles an inch or two long, and conspicuously marked with 
the scars of minute bracts. The flowers appear in May, or, at the north, about the middle of June; 
they are nearly half an inch across, when expanded, with rounded or rarely acute and mostly entire 
sepals, and with broadly obovate undulate dark purple petals often with erose margins. The fruit, which 
ripens in October and remains on the branches during the early months of winter, is smooth, deeply 
lobed, half an inch across, or rather more, with light purple valves. The seeds are somewhat gibbous on 
the dorsal side, broad and rounded above, and narrowed at the end next the hilum; they are a quarter 
of an inch long, with a thin light chestnut-brown wrinkled testa, and are included in a thin scarlet aril. 
Evonymus atropurpureus is widely distributed in eastern America from western New York to 
Nebraska, with an extreme western station in the valley of the upper Missouri River in Montana, and 
extends south to northern Florida, southern Arkansas, and the Indian Territory. It generally grows 
along the borders of woods in rich soil, rarely assuming, east of the Mississippi River, the habit of a 
tree, and being really arborescent in southern Arkansas and the adjacent regions only. 
The wood of Evonymus atropurpureus is heavy, hard, very close-grained, and difficult to season ; 
it is white tinged with orange, with thin inconspicuous medullary rays. It has, when perfectly dry, 
a specific gravity of 0.6592, a cubic foot weighing 41.08 pounds. 
