380 



THYMELEACEJE. (MEZEREUM FAMILY.) 



with 12 or more rudiments of stamens and a globular ovary. — Drupe globular. 

 — Shrubs or trees, with entire leaves and small flowers in axillary clustered 

 umbels. (Name composed of rerpa, four, and dvdrjpd, anther.) 



1. T. geniculata, Noes. (Pond Spice.) Flowers (yellow) appear- 

 ing before the deciduous oblong leaves, which are hairy on the midrib beneath ; 

 branches forked and divaricate, the branchlets zigzag; involucres 2-4-leaved 

 2 - 4-flowered ; fruit red. (Lauras geniculate, Michx.) — Swamps, Virginia and 

 southward. April. 



Order 94. THYMELEACEiE. (Mezereum Family.; 



Shrubs, icith acrid and very tough {not aromatic) bark, entire leaves, and 

 perfect flowers with a regular and simple colored calyx, bearing usually twice 

 as many stamens as its lobes, free from the 1-celled and 1-ovuled ovary, which 

 forms a berry-like drupe in fruit, with a single suspended anatropous seed. 

 Embryo large and almond-like : albumen little or none. — A small family, 

 represented in North America only by a single species, of the genus 



1. DIKCA, L. Leatherwood. Moose-wood. 



Calyx petal-like, tubular-funnel-shaped, truncate, the border wavy or obscure- 

 ly about 4-toothed. Stamens 8, long and slender, inserted on the calyx above 

 the middle, protruded, the alternate ones longer. Style thread-form : stigma 

 capitate. Drupe oval (reddish). — A much-branched bush, with jointed branch- 

 lets, oval-obovate alternate leaves, at length smooth, deciduous, on very short 

 petioles, the bases of which conceal the buds of the next season. Flowers light 

 yellow, preceding the leaves, 3 in a cluster from a bud of 3 dark-hairy scales, 

 forming an involucre, from which soon after proceeds a leafy branch. (Ai'p/c^, 

 the name of a fountain near Thebes, applied by Linnaeus to this North Ameri- 

 can genus, for no imaginable reason, unless because the bush frequently grows 

 near - mountain rivulets.) 



1. D. palustris, L. — Damp rich woods, seldom in swamps; New Eng- 

 land to Penn., Kentucky, and (especially) northward. April. — Shrub 2°-5° 

 high ; the wood white, soft, and very brittle ; but the fibrous bark remarkably 

 tough, used by the Indians for thongs, whence the popular names. In N. New 

 England also called Wicopy. 



Order 95. ELJIAGNACEJE. (Oleaster Family.; 



Shrubs or small trees, with silvery-scurfy leaves and mostly dioecious flow- 

 ers ; further distinguished from the Mezereum Family by the ascending 

 albuminous seed, and the calyx-tube becoming pulpy and berry-like in fruit, 

 enclosing the achenium ; and from the following by the calyx-tube not co- 

 hering with the ovary, &c. A small family, represented east of the Missis- 

 sippi solely by one species of 



