Rhus. ANACAUDIACEiE. 381 



Order XXXVI. ANACARDIACEiE. 



By a. Ckay. 



Shrubs or trees (of temperate and largely of tropical countries), with resinous 

 juice, alternate dotless leaves and no stipules. Flowers small and regular, 

 mostly 5-merous, symmetrical except as to number of carpels. Calyx and corolla 

 imbricated or valvate in the bud. Stamens as many as petals and alternate with 

 them, or sometimes twice as many, inserted with the petals outside of or on a 

 hypogynous or subperigyuous disk. Ovary mainly 1 -celled but with 2 or 3 styles 

 or stigmas (in the Mango sim})le, in the Hog Plums 3-5-celled), and a solitary 

 anatropous ovule. Fruit almost always drupaceous ; seed with large embryo 

 and little or no albumen ; the fiat or plano-convex cotyledons in ours accumbent 

 on the radicle. — Represented only by the polymorphous and wide-spread genus 

 Rhus, except as to the following. 



PisxiciA MexkAna, HBK., beiug unknown as to flowers, is more probably a Rhus (aa 

 below placed) than a solitary American member of an Old World genus. 



VeAtchia Cedrosensis, Gray, Proc. Am. Acad. xx. 290, of the islands off Lower Cali- 

 fornia {Rhus Veatchiana, Kellogg), is the type of a peculiar genus witii accrescent scarious j)etal8 

 and utricular fruit.i 



Sciifxus MoLLE, L., the well-known Pepper-tree or Chili Pepper, native of Chili and 

 Peru, long ago widely distributed and extending to the U. S. borders, is much planted as an 

 ornamental tree in S. California. 



Spoxdias lutea, L., the West Indian IIog Plum, may have effected a lodgment on the 

 Keys of Florida, as its nut-like 5-celled putamen is occasionally found on the beaches. 



1. RHtJS, Tourn. Sumach, &c. (The ancient Greek and Latin name 

 of the S. European species.) — Flowers polygamous or dioecious, seldom truly 

 perfect, small, white, greenish, or rarely yellow rose-color. Calyx small, 5-parted. 

 Petals 0, imbricated in the bud. Stamens 5. Ovule on a funiculus which rises 

 from the base of the cell. Embryo with a short radicle accumbent. — Inst. 611, 

 t. 381 ; L. Gen. no. 241 ; DC. Prodr. ii. 66; Gray, Gen. 111. ii. 157, t. 159, 160; 

 Benth. & Hook. Gen. i. 418, excl. Lifhrcea. li/ius, Cotinus, & Toxicodendron, 

 Tourn. Inst. 610, 611 ; Engler in DC. Monogr. Phan. iv., also Metopiutn, P.Br. 

 Jam. 177. — Trees or shrubs of varied habit, all with resinous and often milky 

 juice, in some poisonous (even the effluvium) to the skin ; bark and foliage of the 

 true Sumachs abounding in tannin, and therefore valuable in leather-dressing. 



§ 1. Cotinus, DC. Dry and smooth drupe in its growth becoming very gib- 

 bous, the remains of the styles therefore deeply lateral : flowers in ample loose 

 panicles, polygamous ; pedicels elong.ating after flowering and becoming plu- 

 mose-villous : leaves simple and entire. — Prodr. ii. 67. (7o/ihm5, Tourn. Inst. 

 610; Engler, 1. c. 349, t. 12. 



1 This species has subsequently been identified by Mr. T. S. Rrandepee, Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci. 

 ser. 2, ii. 140, witli tlic problematic Schinusf discolor of Benth. Dot. Sulph. 11, t. 9, and redescribed 

 as Veatckin discolor. 



