424 ELiEAGXACE.E. (OLEASTER FAMILY.) 



Order 89. TlIYMELEACEiE. (Mezereum Family.) 



SJirubs, with acrid and i-crij lonr/h (not aro7natic) hai-k; entire leaves, and 

 perfect flowers with a regular and .sim/ite colored culijx, bearing usuulhj twice 

 as inanij stamens as its lobes, free from the \-ceUed and \-ovuled ocary, 

 wlilcli forms a berry-like drupe in i'ruit, with a single suspended anatro- 

 pous seed. Kiubryo large: albumen little or none. — A small family, rep- 

 resented in cultivation by Dapiin'e Mezkueum, and one or two other 

 species; in North America only by a single species. 



1 . D i R C A , L. Leatiiekwood. Moose-wood. 



Calyx petal-like, tubular-funnel-shaped, truncate, the border wavy or obscurely 

 about 4-tootlicd. Stamens 8, long and slender, inserted on the calyx above the 

 middle, ])rotruded, the alternute ones Ioniser. Style tliroad-forui : stigma capi- 

 tate. Drupe oval (reddish). — A niuch-branched bush, with jointed branehlcts, 

 oval-obovate alternate leaves, at length smooth, deciduous, on very short peti- 

 oles, the bases of which conceal the buds of the next season. Flowers light 

 yellow, preceding the leaves, 3 or 4 in a cluster from a bud of as many diirk- 

 hairy scales, forming an involucre, from which soon after proceeds a leafy branch. 

 (^IpKrj, the name of a fountain near Thebes, applied by Linnfeus to this North 

 American genus, for no imaginable reason, unless because the bush frequently 

 grows near mountain rivulets.) 



1. D. pallistris, L. — Damp rich woods, seldom in swamps. New England 

 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 Northern New 

 England also called Wicopy. 



Order 90. EL,iE.lGNACE/E. (Oleaster Family.) 



Shrubs or small trees, with silvery-scurf y leaves and mostly dioecious flow- 

 ers ; further distinguished from the Mezereum Family by the erect or 

 ascending albuminous seed, and the calyx-tube becoming pulpy and 

 berry-like in fruit, and strictly enclosing the achenium ; and from the 

 following or by the calyx-tube not cohering with the ovary, &c. A 

 small family, represented by only three North American species, only 

 one strictly within our limits. 



1. SHEPHERDIA, Nutt. Siiepiierdi.x. 



Flowers dioecious; the sterile with a 4-parted calyx (valvatc in the bud) and 

 8 stamens, alternating with as many processes of the thick disk ; the fertile with 

 an urn-shaped 4-cleft calyx, enclosing the ovary (the orifice closed by the teeth 

 of the disk), and becoming berry-like in fruit. Style slender: stigma 1-sidcd. 

 — Leaves opposite, entire, deciduous ; the small flowers nearly sessile in their 

 axils on the branchlets, clustered, or the fertile solitary. (Named for John Shep- 

 herd, formerly curator of the Liverpool Botanic Garden.) 



