424 EL^EAGNACE^E. (OLEASTER FAMILY.) 



ORDER 89. TmnnELEACEJE. (MEZEREUM FAMILY.) 



Shrubs, with acrid and very tough (not aromatic) bark, entire leaves, and 

 perfects/lowers with a regular and simple colored calyx, bearing usually twice 

 as many stamens as its lobes, free from the l-celled and l-ovuled ovary, 

 which forms a berry-like drupe in fruit, with a single suspended anatro- 

 pous seed. Embryo large : albumen little or none. A small family, rep- 

 resented in cultivation by DAPHNE MEZEREUM, and one or two other 

 species ; in North America only by a single species. 



1. D I R C A , L. LEATHERWOOD. MOOSE-WOOD. 



Calyx petal-like, tubular-funnel-shaped, truncate, the border wavy or obscurely 

 about 4-toothed. Stamens 8, long and slender, inserted on the calyx above the 

 middle, protruded, the alternate ones longer. Style thread-form : stigma capi- 

 tate. Drupe oval (reddish). A much-branched bush, with jointed branchlets, 

 oval-obovate alternate leaves, at length smooth, deciduous, on very short peti- 

 oles, the bases of which conceal the buds of the next season. Flowers light 

 yellow, preceding the leaves, 3 or 4 in a cluster from a bud of as many dark- 

 hairy scales, forming an involucre, from which soon after proceeds a leafy branch. 

 (At'picj;, the name of a fountain near Thebes, applied by Linnaaus to this North 

 American genus, for no imaginable reason, unless because the bush frequently 

 grows near mountain rivulets.) 



1. D. palftstris, L. Damp rich woods, seldom in swamps, New England 

 to Penn., Kentucky, and (especially) northward. April. Shrub 2 -5 high ; 

 the wood white, soft, and very brittle ; but the fibrous bark remarkably tough, 

 used by the Indians for thongs, whence the popular names. In Northern New 

 England also called WICOPY. 



ORDER 90. EL,jEAGNACEjE. (OLEASTER FAMILY.) 



Shrubs or small trees, with silvery-scurfy leaves and mostly dioecious flow- 

 ers; further distinguished from the Mezereum Family by the erect or 

 ascending albuminous seed, and the calyx-tube becoming pulpy and 

 berry-like in fruit, and strictly enclosing the achenium ; and from the 

 following or by the calyx-tube not cohering with the ovary, &c. A 

 small family, represented by only three North American species, only 

 one strictly within our limits. 



1. SHEPH^RDIA, Nutt. SHBPHERDIA. 



Flowers dioecious ; the sterile with a 4-parted calyx (valvate in the bud) and 

 8 stamens, alternating with as many processes of the thick disk ; the fertile with 

 an urn-shaped 4-cleft calyx, enclosing the ovary (the orifice closed by the teeth 

 of the disk), and becoming berry-like in fruit. Style slender: stigma 1-sided. 

 ' Leaves opposite, entire, deciduous ; the small flowers nearly sessile in their 

 axils on the branchlets, clustered, or the fertile solitary. (Named for John Shep- 

 herd, formerly curator of the Liverpool Botanic Garden.) 



