58 Staff-Tree (Celastracece) 



pistillate only rudimentary. Stamens, four or five, 

 with slender filaments. Seed-case, hemispherical. 

 May, June. 



Leaves, one to two inches long, egg-shape to reverse egg- 

 shape, edge entire, or sometimes slightly toothed ; 

 smooth. Leaf-stem, slender. 



Fruit, the size of a pea, red, nearly round, on slender 

 stems. Nutlets, four or five, somewhat angular ; a 

 berry-like drupe. August. 



Found, in damp ground from the mountains of Virginia 



northward. 

 A much-branched shrub four to eight feet high, with 



smooth -ash-gray bark ; the young shoots purple or olive, 



with round gray dots. 



I found the pretty bush first on an open, rocky point 

 in Lake Placid, among the Adirondacks. It was set 

 thick with bright red berries, and its whole aspect, owing 

 to the toughening of the wind and sun, was tangled and 

 "chunky." Afterward I found it where it had been more 

 delicately reared, in the damp shade of the neighboring 

 woods, with straighter and slimmer branches, and paler 

 foliage. 



9. Family CELASTRACECE. (Staff-Tree Fam.) 

 Genus EUONYMUS, Tourn. (Burning-Bush, etc.) 



From two Greek words meaning " good " and " name." 



Fig. 14. Burning-Bush. Waahoo. Spindle-Tree. 



E. atropurpiireus, Jacq. 



Flowers, dark purple, small, regular in loose clusters of 

 three to six blossoms, at the sides of the branches ; 

 the parts of the flower commonly in fours. Stamens, 



