114 FAMILIAR TEEES 



ing in front of one of the sepals, are the four awl- 

 shaped stamens which spread outward and upward, 

 springing from beneath a honey-secreting ring-shaped 

 glandular disk which surmounts the ovary. In the latter 

 alone do we have a departure from the symmetrically 

 alternating whorls of four, the two chambers of which 

 it consists, each representing a carpel, being placed 

 with their midribs and seed-bearing placentas in 

 front of the sepals and stamens of what is termed the 

 median plane a plane passing from back to front of 

 the blossom through the bract in the axil of which 

 the flower springs. 



Though its congener, the Cornelian Cherry (Cornus 

 mas L), is mentioned by Homer, Virgil and Theo- 

 phrastus, the earliest botanical history of our hedge- 

 row shrub is not quite so clear. As Parkinson puts 

 it, " There is much doubt and question among many of 

 our later writers about this female Cornell, whether 

 it should be the Virgo, sanguined of Pliny, or the 

 Hartriegell of Tragus, or his FavZbaum, some refer- 

 ring it to the one, some to the other, but the general 

 tenet of the most is, that in most things it answereth 

 both to the Thelycrania of Theophrastus, and may 

 well enough agree with the Virgo, sanguinea of 

 Pliny." 



It must be explained that Thelycrania is the 

 Greek equivalent for Gorn'us fce'mina, since hranon 

 or hrania are the old Greek names of the Cornelian 

 Cherry, names connected with a root signifying hard- 

 ness, just as the Latin cornus is most probably 

 connected with cornu, a horn, with reference to the 

 horny texture of the wood of one species. The'lus 



