NYSSACE.E 



779 



Fig. 699 



of 2 or 3 layers of annual growth. The bark of the roots and the berries are stimulant and 

 diaphoretic, and are sometimes used in medicine and in domestic practice. 



Distribution. Deep moist soil in the neighborhood of streams; southern Pennsylvania 

 to southern Indiana, southeastern Iowa and southeastern Missouri, and southward to 

 northern Florida, western Louisiana, and eastern Texas; probably of its largest size on 

 the foot-hills of the Big Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. 



Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental plant in the eastern states and in western 

 Europe; hardy in eastern Massachusetts. 



LI. NYSSACE.E. 



Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, scaly buds, alternate entire dentate or serrate 

 deciduous leaves, without stipules. Flowers dioscious, polygamo-dioecious or perfect; stam- 

 inate, calyx minute, 5-toothed or lobed; petals 5 or more, imbricated in the bud, or 0; 

 stamens as many, twice as many, or fewer than the petals, usually in 2 series; filaments 

 sometimes of 2 lengths, elongated filiform or subulate; disk fleshy, depressed at apex; pistil- 

 late flowers, calyx-tube adnate to the ovary; petals 5 or more, imbricated in the bud; ovary 

 l-celled or 6-10-celled; ovule solitary, pendulous from the apex of the cell, anatropous; 

 micropyle superior; disk epigynous, pulvinate, the apex depressed or convex, or 0; style 

 subulate, curved or spirally involute at apex, or 2-parted, or conic and divided into as many 

 stigmatic lobes as the cells of the ovary. Fruit drupaceous or subsamaroid, crowned with 

 the remnants of the calyx, l-celled and 1-seeded, or 3-5-celled, the cells thin, 4-seeded; seed 

 pendent, testa membranaceous or thin, albumen fleshy; cotyledons foliaceous or thin; radi- 

 cle cylindric. 



Nyssacese with 3 genera, Nyssa L., Camptotheca Decne. and Davidia Baill. and 8 

 species is confined to eastern North America, western China, Thibet, the Himalayas and 

 the Mala/ Archipelago. 



1. NYSSA L. 



Trees, with leaves conduplicate in the bud, petiolate, sometimes remotely angulate or 

 toothed, mostly crowded at the end of the branches. Flowers polygamo-dioecious, minute, 

 greenish white; stamina te on slender pedicels from the axils of minute caducous bracts, in 

 simple or compound clusters on long axillary peduncles bibracteolate near the middle or at 

 the apex or sometimes without bractlets; calyx disciform or cup-shaped, the limb 5-toothed; 

 petals 5, imbricated in the bud, equal or unequal, ovate or linear-oblong, thick, inserted on 

 the margin of the conspicuous pulvinate entire or lobed disk, erect; stamens 5-12, exserted; 



