140 WATER-MILFOIL FAMILY. 



42. HAMAMELACE^I, WITCH-HAZEL FAMILY. 



Shrubs or trees, with alternate simple leaves, deciduous stipules, 

 small flowers in heads, spikes, or little clusters, the calyx united 

 bdow with the base of the 2-styled ovary, which forms a hard or 

 woody 2-celled and 2-beaked pod, opening at the summit. Sta- 

 mens and petals when present inserted on the calyx. Three wild 

 plants of the country, belonging to as many genera. 



$ 1. Shrubs, with perfect or merely polt/r/anwusfloirerf, a regular calyx, find a sinyle 

 ovule, becoming a bony seed, suspended from tlie top of each ctll. 



1. HAMAMKLIS. Flowers in small clusters in the axils of the leaves, expanding 



late, in autumn, ripening the seeds late the next summer. Calyx 4-parted. 

 Petals 4, strap-shaped. Stamens 8, very short; the 4 alternate with the pet- 

 als bearing anthers, the 4 opposite them imperfect and scale-like Styles 

 short. Pod with an outer coat separating from the inner. 



2. FOTHKRGILLA. Flowers in a scaly-bracted spike, in spring, rather earlier 



than the leaves. Calyx bell-shaped, slightly 5-7-toothed. Petals none. 

 Stamens about 24, rather showy, the long and club-shaped filaments bright 

 white. Styles slender. Pod hairy. 



2. Tree, with monoecious small flowers, in dense heads or clusters, destitute both of 

 calyx and corolla, the fertile with many ovules in each cell, but only one or ttvo 

 ripening into scale-like seeds. 



3. LIQUIDAMBAR. Headsof flowers each with a deciduous involucre of 4 bracts, 



the sterile in a conical cluster, consisting of numerous short stamens with 

 little scales intermixed; the fertile loosely racemed or spiked on a drooping 

 peduncle, composed of many ovaries (surrounded by some little scales), each 

 with 2 awl-shaped beaks, ail cohering together and hardening in fruit. 



1. HAMAMELIS, WITCH-HAZEL. (An old Greek name of Medlar, 

 inappropriately transferred to this wholly unlike American shrub.) 



^' Virginica. Tall shrub, of damp woods, with the leaves obovatc or 

 oval, wavy-toothed, straight-veined like a Hazel, slightly downv ; the yellow 

 fiowers remarkable for their appearance late in autumn, just as the leaves are 

 turning and about to fall. Seeds eatable. 



2. FOTHERGILLA. (Named for Dr. Fothergill of London, a friend and 

 correspondent of Bartram.) 



F. alnifblia. Low, rather ornamental shrub, in swamps, from Virginia S., 

 with oval or obovate straight-veined leaves, toothed at the summit and often 

 hoary beneath, the white llowers in spring. 



3. LIQUIDAMBAR, SWEET-GUM TREE or BILSTED. (Names 

 allude to the fragrant terebinthinc juice or balsam which exudes 'vlien the 

 trunk is wounded.) 



L. Styraciflua, the only species of this country : a large and beautiful 

 tree in low grounds, from S. New England to 111. and especially S., with fine- 

 grained wood, gray bark forming corky ridges on the branches, and smooth and 

 glossy deeply . r >-7-lol>rd leaves, which are fragrant when bruised, changing to 

 Deep Crimson in autumn, their triangular lobes pointed and beset with glandular 

 teeth : greenish Howcrs appearing with the leaves in early spring. 



43. HALORAGE^, WATER-MILFOIL FAMILY. 



Contains n few inMirnilieant aquatic or marsh plants, with small 

 frrernisli flowers seile in the axils of the (often whorled) leaves 

 or bracts, and a single ovule and seed suspended in each of the 

 1 -1 cells of the ovary. 



