ARALIACEAE. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. o7 
ARALIA. 
FLowers perfect, polygamo-monecious or polygamo-dicecious; calyx-tube coher- 
ent with the ovary, the limb truncate, repand or minutely 5-toothed, the teeth valvate 
in estivation; petals 5, imbricated in estivation; stamens 5; ovary 2 to 5-celled; 
ovules solitary in each cell. Fruit a berry-like drupe, 2 to 5-seeded. Leaves alternate, 
digitate, pinnate or decompound, stipulate, deciduous. 
Aralia, Linnzus, Gen. 88 (1737).— A. L. de Jussieu, Gen. 
218. — Meisner, Gen. 152 (in part).— Endlicher, Gen. 
794 (in part). — Decaisne & Planchon, Rev. Hort. 1854, 
104. — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. i. 936. 
Dimorphanthus, Miquel, Comm. Phyt. 95 (1840). 
Aromatic spiny trees and shrubs, with stout pithy branchlets and thick fleshy roots; or bristly 
Leaves alternate, digitate or once or twice pinnate, the pinne serrulate ; 
Bracts and 
or glabrous perennial herbs. 
stipules inconspicuous, produced on the expanded and clasping base of the petiole. 
Flowers on slender jointed pedicels, umbellate, small, greenish white, the umbels 
Calyx-tube coherent with the 
bractlets minute. 
solitary, racemose, panicled or rarely collected into compound umbels. 
ovary, the limb truncate, repand or minutely five-toothed. Disk epigynous, explanate, confluent with 
the base of the style, the margin thin and free. Petals five, inserted by their broad bases on the 
margin of the disk, ovate, obtuse or acute and slightly inflexed at the apex. 
the margin of the disk, alternate with the petals; filaments filiform ; anthers oblong or rarely ovate, 
attached on the back, introrse, two-celled, the cells opening longitudinally. Ovary two to five-celled ; 
styles two to five, in the fertile flower distinct and erect or slightly united at the base, spreading and 
incurved above the middle, or incurved from the base and sometimes inflexed at the apex, crowned with 
the large capitate stigmas; in the sterile flower short and united ; ovules solitary, suspended from the 
apex of the cell, anatropous ; raphe ventral, the micropyle superior. Fruit laterally compressed or three 
to five-angled, crowned with the remnants of the styles ; exocarp fleshy; nutlets two to five, orbicular, 
Seed compressed ; testa thin, adnate to 
Stamens five, inserted on 
ovate or oblong, compressed, crustaceous or bony, one-seeded. 
the thick fleshy albumen. Embryo minute, next the hilum ; cotyledons ovate or oblong, as long as the 
straight radicle or barely longer.’ 
Aralia, as the genus is now limited, consists of about thirty North American and Asiatic species. 
In Asia it is common in the eastern and southern parts of the continent from Manchuria to northern 
India, Japan, and the islands of the Malay Archipelago. In eastern North America seven species, all 
herbs with the exception of Aralia spinosa, a small tree, are distributed from Canada to New Mexico ;° 
one herbaceous species grows on the mountains of California,* and one or two others in Mexico.> In 
1 The genus is conveniently divided into two sections : — Candolle, Prodr. iv. 258.— Gray, Smithsonian Contrib. v. 65 (Pi. 
Evaraia. Stems woody or herbaceous ; leaves pinnate or de- 
compound ; flowers polygamo-monecious or perfect ; styles usually 
five. 
GINSENG. Stems herbaceous ; leaves digitate ; flowers polygamo- 
diccious ; styles two or rarely three. 
2 Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. i. 646. — Watson & Coulter, Gray’s 
Man. ed. 6, 212. 
8 Aralia humilis, Cavanilles, Icon. iv. 7, t. 313 (1797).— De 
Wright. ii.). 
4 Aralia Californica, Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. xi. 144 (1876). — 
Brewer & Watson, Bot. Cal. i. 273. 
Aralia racemosa, Torrey, Pacific R. R. Rep. iv. 94 (1856) (not 
Linneus). 
Aralia racemosa, var. occidentalis, Torrey, Bot. Wilkes Explor. 
Exped. 325 (1874). 
5 Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. i. 571. — Brandegee, Proc. Cal. 
Acad. ser. 2, ii. 165, t. 8 (Pl. Baja Cal.). 
