Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



contention is not now held and it is classed in the small 

 family Cornacece with the dog-wood and the aucuba, yet 

 it forms a very distinctive and anomalous genus within 

 that family. 



The most interesting point about the Garrya is that 

 some individuals are male, some are female, and though 

 both bear catkins one never finds both male and female 

 catkins on the same shrub. The two kinds of catkins 

 are very similar in appearance, but the male are rather 

 larger and finer. They are curious attractive objects, 

 usually five or six inches in length, though they may 

 be even a foot long, and they hang straight down so 

 that the shrub in flowering time is a dark green mass 

 of foliage scored by innumerable short, grey, parallel 

 lines a most striking object. In fact, it is quite unique 

 among shrubs, and its inherent charm is enhanced by 

 the fact that mid-winter is its time of flowering, 

 December, January and February seeing it at its best. 



Each catkin consists of a long axis on which is set 

 in a spiral a host of tiny flowers. On the male catkin 

 there are a number of rectangular-looking scales, from 

 beneath the edge of which certain male flowers appear, 

 each flower having four sepals and four stamens, no 

 petals, and only a rudimentary and quite useless seed- 

 case. On a female catkin there are similar scales, but 

 the little protruding flowers have no calyx and only 



rudimentary stamens, though they possess a good seed- 



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