174 HALORAGE^E. (WATEK-MILFOIL FAMILY.) 



3. LIQUIDAMBAB, L. SWEET-GUM TKEE. 



Flowers usually monoecious, in globular heads or catkins ; the sterile arranged 

 in a conical cluster, naked : stamens very numerous, intermixed with minute 

 scales: filaments short. Fertile flowers consisting of many 2-celled 2-beaked 

 ovaries, subtended by minute scales in place of a calyx, all more or less cohering 

 together and hardening in fruit, forming a spherical catkin or head ; the pods 

 opening between the 2 awl-shaped beaks. Styles 2, stigmatic down the inner 

 side. Ovules many, but only one or two perfecting. Seeds with a wing-angled 

 seed-coat. Catkins racemed, nodding, in the bud enclosed by a 4-leaved decid- 

 uous involucre. (A mongrel name, from liquidus, fluid, and the Arabic ambar, 

 amber; in allusion to the fragrant terebinthine juice which exudes from the 

 tree.) 



1. L. Styraciflua, L. (SWEET GUM. BILSTED.) Leaves rounded, 

 deeply 5-7-lobed, smooth and shining, glandular-serrate, the lobes pointed. 

 Moist woods, from Connecticut to Illinois, and southward. April. A large 

 and beautiful tree, with fine-grained wood, the gray bark commonly with 

 corky ridges on the branchlets. Leaves fragrant when bruised, turning deep 

 crimson in autumn. The woody pods filled mostly with abortive seeds, re- 

 sembling sawdust. 



ORDER 38. HAL-ORAGE^E. (WATER-MILFOIL FAMILY.) 



Aquatic or marsh plants (at least in northern countries), with the incon- 

 spicuous symmetrical flowers sessile in the axils of leaves or bracts, calyx-tube 

 coherent with the ovary, which consists of 2-4 more or less united carpels 

 (or in Hippuris of only one carpel), the styles or sessile stigmas distinct. 

 Limb of the calyx obsolete or very short in fertile flowers. Petals small 

 or none. Stamens 1-8. Fruit indehiscent, 1 - 4-celled, with a single 

 anatropous seed suspended from the summit of each cell. Embryo in the 

 axis of fleshy albumen : cotyledons minute. Formerly attached as a sub- 

 order to Onagraceae, but now deemed quite distinct. 



1. My riophyllum. Flowers montecious or polygamous, the parts in fours, with or without 



petals. Stamens 4 or 8. Immersed leaves pinnately dissected. 



2. Proserpinaca. Flowers perfect, the parts in threes. Petals none. Immersed leaves 



pinnately dissected. 



3. Hippuris. Flowers usually perfect. Petals none. Stamen, style, and cell of the ovary 



only one. Leaves entire. 



1. MYRIOPH^LLUM, Vaill. WATER-MILFOIL. 



Flowers mono3cious or polygamous. Calyx of the sterile flowers 4-parted, 

 of the fertile 4-toothed. Petals 4, or none. Stamens 4-8. Fruit nut-like, 4- 

 celled, deeply 4-lobed : stigmas 4, recurved. Perennial aquatics. Leaves 

 crowded, often whorled ; those under water pinnately parted into capillary divis- 

 ions. Flowers sessile in the axils of the upper leaves, usually above water in 

 summer ; the uppermost staminate. (Name from pvpios, a thousand, and </>vX- 

 \ov, a leaf, i. e. Milfoil.) 



