AMENTIFER &. 191 
ceous on the later shoots and on the suckers. Flowers diccious, both 
the male and female flowers in catkins. Catkin-scales of the male catkins 
covering 1 flower, with the floral-scales reduced to 1 or 2 glands, or 
united into a disk or perianth (?): stamens generally 2, but sometimes 
8, 4, 5, 12, or more. Female flowers with entire or laciniated catkin- 
scales, each scale covering 1 flower, which has 2 glands sometimes 
combined into a cup or perianth at the base: ovary sessile or stalked, 
1-celled or imperfectly 2-celled, with numerous ascending ovules; style 
short, with 2 entire or 2-cleft or 2-partite (rarely 4-cleft) stigmas. 
Fruit a capsule, opening by 2 valves containing numerous seeds clothed 
with silky hairs. 
GENUS IX.—POPULUS. Tournef. 
Flowers diecious. Male catkins cylindrical: catkin-scales irregu- 
larly toothed or laciniate at the apex: floral-scales united to form an 
oblique perianth or cuplike disk: stamens 8 to 30, inserted in the disk; 
filaments distinct. Female flowers in ovoid or cylindrical catkins: 
catkin-scales laciniate or nearly entire: floral-scales united to form a 
cuplike disk, surrounding the base of the ovary: ovary sessile within 
the disk, 1-celled and many-ovuled; style very short; stigmas elongate, 
spreading, but so deeply cleft as to appear 4- or 4-cleft, so as to be 
apparently 8 in number. Fruit catkins elongated, lax, with caducous 
bracts. Fruit a conical herbaceous capsule, opening by 2 valves, and 
containing numerous seeds clothed with long silky white down. 
Trees, or more rarely shrubs, with the leaves broadly ovate, rhom- 
boidal, roundish or deltoid, often lobed or deeply toothed. Catkins 
drooping, appearing before the leaves. 
The most commonly-given derivation of this word is from populus, which, as Dr. 
Prior says, “we might fancy to have been suggested by the pap-ap-ap of the quivering 
leaves.” There is, however, he states, a resemblance between the leaves of the species 
of populus and that of the Indian Ficus religiosa, the name of which is pepul, “a 
name which we can scarcely doubt is not an accidental coincidence of sound with 
populus, but identical with it in its origin, and brought westward into Europe by the 
early Asiatic colonists, and carried eastward into India in connection, perhaps, with 
some religious observance.” 
Section I.—LEUCE. Duby. 
Catkins dense in fruit, their scales ciliated with long hairs. Stamens 
usually 8 (4 to 12). Stigma with 4 to 8 slender segments, which are 
linear, or slightly enlarged at the apex. Young branches pubescent, 
hairy or cottony. 
