12 HOUGH'S AMERICAN WOODS. 



A second class of Flowering Plants and comprising the rest of the group is the 

 Endogenous or Monocotyledonous Plants, characterized by having stems in which the 

 wood occurs as threads or bundles running through a cellular, pith-like tissue, so that 

 a transverse section exhibits the wood as dots and not in concentric rings. Leaves 

 mostly parallel-veined. Embryo with single cotyledon, or rarely two, and then alter, 

 nate and unequal. Parts of the flower generally in threes. In southern United 

 States and elsewhere in or near the tropics trees are found, such as the Palms, etc., 

 which belong to this class, but none that we have to do with at present. 



Exogenous plants are subdivided into two well-marked groups or sub- 

 classes Angiospertnce and Gymnospermm. The former includes by far 

 the greater part of the Flowering Plants, and is represented in Part I of 

 this work by eighteen species. Let it be understood, therefore, that its 

 characters, omitted in further descriptions, apply equally to all the species 

 up to and including the eighteenth. 



ANGIOSPERM^E. 



Flowering, exogenous plants in which there is a complete pistil with 

 stigma and closed ovary containing ovules which develop into seeds at 

 maturity. This sub-class comprises many groups of plants known as 

 Order*, a few of which will be taken up in the following pages. Con- 

 sidering them in the sequence commonly accepted by botanists, we will 

 first characterize the 



OKDER MAGNOLIACEJE: MAGNOLIA FAMILY. 



Learns alternate, simple, coriaceous, entire or lobed (never toothed), marked with 

 minute transparent dots, feather- veined; leaf buds covered with membranous 

 stipules, which soon fall away. Flowers single, large, polypetalous, polyandrous, 

 polygamous, hypogenous, perfect; sepals and petals colored alike, in three or more 

 circles of three each, imbricated in the bud, deciduous; anthers adnate; pistils 

 numerous, packed together and covering the elongated receptacle, and forming in 

 Fruit a sort of fleshy or dry cone containing one or two seeds in each carpel, with a 

 minute embryo in fleshy albumen. 



Trees or shrubs with aromatic and bitter bark. 



GENUS MAGNOLIA, L. 



Leaves folded lengthwise in the bud, embracing and embraced by the sheathing 

 stipules. Leaf-buds conical. Flowers large, fragrant; sepals 3; petals 6-9; anthers 

 longer than the filaments and opening inward; carpels 2-valved and 2-seeded, aggre- 

 gated and coherent in a mass. Fruit a fleshy, somewhat woody cone, each carpel 

 opening at maturity along its back, letting out its 1 or 2 berry-like seeds, sus- 

 pended each by a long, extensile thread. 



Trees and shrubs. (Genus named in compliment to Prof. Pierre Magnol, an early 

 French botanist.) 



51. MAGNOLIA GLAUCA, L. 



SWEET BAY, SMALL MAGNOLIA, WHITE OR SWAMP LAUREL, BEAVER- 

 TREE. 



Ger., Grauer Riberbaum ; Fr., Magnolier glauque; Sp., Laurel duke. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS: Leaves scattered along the branches, thickish, entire, 

 broadly lanceolate' to oval, obtuse at apex, shining green above, glaucous whit- 



