446 ARISTOLOCHIACE^E. (BIRTHWORT FAMILY.) 



3. Calyx-tube straight, open, with ample 6-lobed limb, the lobes appendaged ; 

 anthers equidistant; erect herbs ; flowers in axillary cymose fascicles. 



A. CLEMAxiTis, L., with long-petioled cordate leaves, from Europe, is said 

 to have permanently escaped near Ithaca, N. Y. (Dudley). 



ORDER 92. PIPERACEJE. (PEPPER FAMILY.) 



Herbs, with jointed sterna, alternate entire leaves, and perfects/lowers in 

 spikes, entirely destitute of floral envelopes, and with 3-5 more or less 

 separate or united ovaries. Ovules few, orthotropous. Embryo heart- 

 shaped, minute, contained in a little sac at the apex of the albumen. 

 The characters are those of the Tribe Saururece, the Piperaceaz proper 

 (wholly tropical) differing in having a 1-celled and 1-ovuled ovary. 



1. SAURURUS, L. LIZARD'S-TAIL. 



Stamens mostly 6 or 7, hypogynous, with distinct filaments. Fruit some- 

 what fleshy, wrinkled, of 3-4 iudehiscent carpels united at base. Stigmas 

 recurved. Seeds usually solitary, ascending. Perennial marsh herbs, with 

 heart-shaped converging-ribbed petioled leaves, without distinct stipules ; flow- 

 ers (each with a small bract adnate to or borne on the pedicel) crowded in a 

 slender wand-like and naked peduncled terminal spike or raceme (its appear- 

 ance giving rise to the name, from aavpos, a lizard, and ovpd, tail). 



1. S. cernuus, L. Flowers white, fragrant; spike nodding at the end ; 

 bract lanceolate ; filaments long and capillary. Swamps, Conn, to Ont., Minn., 

 Mo., and southward. June- Aug. 



ORDER 9:3. LAURACE^]. (LAUREL FAMILY.) 



Aromatic trees or shrubs, icith alternate simple leaves mostly marked with 

 minute pellucid dots, and flowers with a rer/ular calyx of 4 or 6 colored 

 sepals, imbricated in 2 rows in the bud, free from the 1-celled and l-oculed 

 ovary, and mostly fewer than the stamens ; anthers opening by 2 or 4 uplifted 

 valves. Flowers clustered. Style single. Fruit a 1 -seeded berry or 

 drupe. Seed anatropous, suspended, with no albumen, rilled by the large 

 almond-like embryo. 



* Flowers perfect, panieled ; stamens 12, three of them sterile, three with extrorse anthers. 

 1. Persea. Calyx persistent. Anthers 4-celled. Evergreen. 

 * * Flowers dioecious, or nearly so ; stamens in the sterile flowers 9. Leaves deciduous. 



'2. Sassafras. Flowers in corymb- or umbel-like racemes. Anthers 4-celled, 4-valved. 



3. I.itsra. Flowers few in involucrate umbels. Anthers 4-celled, 4-valved. 



4. Lindera. Flowers in umbel-like clusters. Anthers 2-celled, 2-valved. 



1. PERSEA, Gaertn. ALLIGATOR TEAR. 



Flowers perfect, with a 6-parted calyx, persistent at the base of the berry-like 

 fruit. Stamens 12, in four rows, the 3 of the innermost row sterile and gland- 

 like, the rest bearing 4-celled anthers (i. e. with each proper cell divided trans 

 versely into two), opening by as many uplifted valves; the anthers of 3 

 stamens turned outward, the others introrse. Trees, with persistent entire 

 leaves, and small pauicled flowers. (An ancient name of some Oriental tree.) 



