ARALIACE.E. 43 



CUCURBITACE.33. 



Tendril-bearing, trailing, or climbing herbs, usually rough and rather succulent. 

 Flowers axillary to alternate leaves, solitary or clustered, mouoacious. Calyx adherent 

 to the ovary, the limb 5-lobed. Corolla with united petals. Stamens usually 3, 

 united. Pistil 2-3 carpeled. Squashes and pumpkins, natives of America, with melons, 

 cucumbers and gourds, natives of the Eastern Continent, are the common cultivated 

 plants of this order. Key to genera and species, p. 129. 



DATISCACEJE. 



In our genus, stout, glabrous, dioecious, perennial herbs, with laciniate-pinnatifid 

 leaves, the greenish flowers clustered in the axils. Key to genera and species, p. 129. 



CACTACEJE. 



Green, fleshy, and thickened, persistent (though mostly herb-like), usually leafless 

 plants; globular or columnar, or jointed and often flattened, usually armed with bundles 

 of spines from the axils of absent leaves. Flowers with numerous sepals, petals, and 

 stamens, the cohering bases of all coating the inferior 1 -celled ovary, and forming above 

 it a tube or cup: style 1 with several stigmas. Key to genera and species, p. 129. 



FICOIDE^E. 



Usually very succulent plants with opposite leaves. (In our plants Mollugo is not 

 succulent, and Tetragonia has alternate leaves.) Petals and stamens various, the former 

 often wanting: carpels 2 to many. Key to genera and species, p. 130 



TETRAGONIA. 



T. expansa, Murr., a native of New Zealand, and cultivated under the name of 

 New Zealand Spinach, is apparently a native of our coast, growing on the shore of San 

 Francisco Bay. It is described as follows in Bay-Reg. Bot. Perennial, with alternate, 

 plane, fleshy leaves, and axillary, greenish, apetalous flowers: fruit 4-horned, about \ 

 inch long, scarcely as broad. 



ARALIACE^E. 



Herbs, shrubs, or trees, with mostly stout, hollow stems, and alternate lobed or 

 compound leaves. Flowers in simple umbels, which are often arranged paniculately or 



