AND GENERA OF PLANTS. 261 



Obs. This group appears to form a very natural genus. The structure of 

 the fruit is extremely different from that of Vaccinium myrtillus, or the true 

 Vacciniums; and all the species, peculiar to the United States, have, again, a 

 different seed from the European type, the spermoderm being impress-punc- 

 tate. In the present genus, the seeds within the bony putamen, are also simi- 

 larly punctate. 



* BATODENDRON. (Vaccinium, species of Authors.) 

 Calyx adnate to the ovary, the border five-toothed. Corolla campanulate, five- 

 cleft. Stamens ten, included, anthers with dorsal awns, bifid at the apex, 

 opening by long oblique foramina, the filaments smooth, short, and equal. 

 Style exserted, stigma minute, truncated. Berry globose, invested by the 

 calyx, umbilicate, ten-celled, cells three to five-seeded; the seeds sublen- 

 ticular, puncticulate, imbedded in an indurated granular pulp. Albumen 

 large and fleshy. Embryo small. — A small evergreen tree of the southern 

 parts of the United States, intricately branched ; leaves lucid, obovate, sub- 

 serrulate. Racemes lateral and terminal; leafy. Flowers white, long, pe- 

 dunculate, without bracteoles. Berries black and rather dry, but sweetish, 

 and nearly inedible from the presence of a rough indurated granular pulp. 

 Allied to the preceding genus, but with a very different fruit, and some- 

 what distinct habit. The name is derived from ^atos, a bramble, the black- 

 berry or bilberry, and hsvh^ov, a tree.) 



Batodendron arboreum, Vaccinium arboreum. Marshall, Mich. Flor. Bor. 

 Amer. 1. p. 230. Presl. 1. p. 285. Decand. 7. p. 567. Vaccinium Dijfusum. 

 AiTON. Hort. Kew. vol. 2. p. 11, 



Hab. From North Carolina or Virginia to Florida and west of the Mississippi in Arkansas known 

 by the name of the Farkleberry. A small tree 10 to 20 feet high, with roundish and obovate leaves. 

 Berries black and smooth, but scarcely edible, being filled with a granular pulp almost as coarse as 

 saw-dust. The spermoderm thick, impress-punctate and indurated. The bark of the root is very 

 astringent, and a decoction of it is employed in dysentery and diarrhoea, as well as the dried fruit. 

 (Elliott.) Perhaps Vaccinium leucanthum of Chamisso may form a second species of this 

 genus. 



