380 THYMELEACE^E. (iVIEZEKEUM 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 dvOrjpd, anther.) 



1. T. gcuiculata, Nees. (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. (Laurus geniculata, Michx.) Swamps, Virginia and 

 southward. April. 



ORDER 94. THYMELEACE^E. (MEZEREUM FAMILY.; 



Shrubs, with 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 l-celled and \-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. DIRCA, 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. (Atp/ci;, 

 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. pallkstris, 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. EL,jEAGNACE2. (OLEASTER FAMILY.; 



Shrubs or small trees, with silvery-scurfy leaves and mostly dicecious floio- 

 ers ; further distinguished from the Mezereuin 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 

 aippi solely by one species of 



