344 



RUBIACEAE. 



Cephalanthus. Button Bush. 

 (Family Rubiaceae). 



Rather slender openly branched 

 shrubs: deciduous. Twigs round, 

 slender, floriferous or dying back 

 at the end, glabrous: pith rather 

 small, more or less 4- or 6-sided, 

 light brown, continuous. Buds 

 mostly solitary, sessile, conical, 

 indistinctly scaly, in depressed 

 supra-axillary areas, the end-bud 

 lacking. Leaf-scars in whorls of 3, 

 or opposite in pairs, roundish, 

 )-_' ,;!] i! somewhat raised: bundle-trace 1, 



\ crescent-shaped: stipule-scars or 



persistent stipules connecting the 

 leaf-scars. 



Winter-character references: 

 Cephalanthus occidentalis. Bren- 

 del, 28, 30, pi. 1; Hitchcock (3), 

 16; Schneider, f. 223. 



Even through the winter, the 

 button bush usually carries at the 

 ends of its branches some of the round inflorescence-heads 

 that have given it its common name. Its prevailing leaf- 

 arrangement appears to be whorled, but many plants with 

 opposite leaf-scars are found. In this respect it parallels 

 Deutzia, Diervilla and Hydrangea: but in these genera the 

 opposite arrangement seems to be the more characteristic, 

 and the whorled the exceptional. 

 Twigs reddish and glossy. C. occidentalis. 



