OLEACE^: 779 



brown branches forming an oblong rather narrow head, and stout branchlets light 

 green and covered with pale pubescence or sometimes glabrous when they first ap- 

 pear, terete or slightly angled in their first winter, often much thickened below the 

 nodes, light brown or orange color, and marked by large scattered darker colored 

 lenticels and by the elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars displaying a semicircular row 

 of conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars; often a shrub, with several stout thick 

 spreading stems. "Winter-buds broadly ovate, acute, ^' long, with about 5 pairs of 

 scales increasing in length from the outer to the inner pair, and ovate, acute, keeled 

 on the back, light brown and slightly pilose on the outer surface, bright green and 

 lustrous on the inner surface, and ciliate on the margins, with scattered white hairs, 

 those of the inner pair at maturity obovate, gradually narrowed below, foliaceous, 

 and I'-l^' long. Bark of the trunk \'-^ thick, and irregularly divided into small 

 thin appressed brown scales tinged with red. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, and 

 light brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood. The bark is tonic and is sometimes 

 used in decoctions and in the treatment of intermittent fevers, or as an aperient and 

 diuretic, and in homoeopathic practice. 



Distribution. Banks of streams in rich moist soil; Lancaster and Chester coun- 

 ties, southern Pennsylvania, to the shores of Tampa Bay, Florida, and through the 

 Gulf states to southern Arkansas and the valley of the Brazos River, Texas. 



Often cultivated as an ornamental plant in the eastern United States, and in west- 

 ern and central Europe. 



3. OSMANTHUS, Lour. 



Trees or shrubs, with terete or slightly angled branches, and fibrous roots. Leaves 

 simple, persistent. Flowers fragrant, polygamo-dicecious or perfect, on ebracteolate 

 pedicels subtended by scale-like bracts, in short axillary racemes or short axillary 

 or rarely terminal fascicles; calyx minute, 4-toothed or divided, the divisions im- 

 bricated in the bud, persistent under the fruit; corolla tubular, 4-lobed, the lobes 

 imbricated in the bud, ovate, obtuse, spreading after anthesis; stamens 2, inserted 

 on the base of the corolla opposite the lateral lobes of the calyx, or rarely 4; fila- 

 ments terete, short; anthers ovate or linear-oblong, blunt, or apiculate by the pro- 

 longation of the connective, attached on the back below the middle, 2-celled, the 

 cells opening longitudinally by marginal slits, sometimes rudimentary or in the 

 pistillate flower; ovary subglobose; style columnar, short or elongated, crowned 

 with an entire capitate stigma; ovules laterally attached near the apex of the cell; 

 raphe ventral. Fruit a fleshy 1-seeded ovoid or globose drupe tipped with the rem- 

 nants of the style; flesh thin and succulent; stone hard and bony. Seed filling the 

 cavity of the stone; cotyledons flat, much longer than the short superior radicle 

 turned toward the hilum. 



Osmantlms with ten species inhabits eastern North America, the Hawaiian Islands, 

 Polynesia, Japan, and the Himalayas. Osmanthus fragrans, Lour., a native of China 

 and the temperate Himalayas, is cultivated in China for its fragrant minute cream- 

 colored or yellow flowers used by the Chinese to perfume tea, and is everywhere a 

 favorite garden plant. 



The generic name, from barf and &t>6os, relates to the fragrance of the flowers. 



1. Osmanthus Americanus, B. & H. Devil Wood. 



Leaves lanceolate-oblong or sometimes obovate, acute or rarely emarginate at the 

 apex and gradually narrowed at the base, with thickened revolute margins, when 



