74 Introduction to Botany. 



SAPINDACE^. SoAPBERKY Family. 



Trees or shrubs, with simple or compound leaves. Flowers mostly 

 unsymmetrical and often irregular. Sepals and petals 4-5. Stamens 

 5-10, inserted in a fleshy disk. Ovary 2-3-lobed, with as many cells. 

 Ovules 1-2 in each cell. 



I. ACER. Maple. 



(Latin name of the maple.) 



Mostly trees, with palmately lobed, opposite leaves and small, 

 polygamo-dioecious flowers. Calyx usually 5 -lobed or parted ; petals 

 of the same number or wanting. Stamens 3-12. The 2-celled ovary 

 with a pair of ovules in each cell. Styles 2, stigmatic along their inner 

 surfaces. Fruit, 2 diverging, long-winged samaras, joined together at 

 their bases. 



1. Acer dasycarpum, Ehrh. (Gr., dasys, dense or thick; karpos, fruit.) Sil- 

 ver, Soft, or White Maple. Becoming large trees. Leaves (white and some- 

 what pubescent beneath) deeply 5-lobed, 4 to 6 inches long, the lobes irregularly 

 dentate. Flowers greenish or reddish, in dense, sessile, lateral clusters, appearing 

 before the leaves. Petals none. Ovary woolly when young. Along streams. 



2. Acer saccharinum, Wang. (Gr., sakcharon^ cane or palm sugar.) SUGAR 

 or Rock Maple. Large trees, whose sap yields most of the maple sugar of com- 

 merce. Leaves 3-7-lobed, with rounded sinuses, pale beneath and dark green 

 above. Flowers in lateral or terminal corymbs on long, slender, drooping, hairy 

 pedicels, appearing with the leaves. In rich woods. 



3. Acer Negiindo, L. (New Latin for a native name.) Box Elder or Ash- 

 leaved Maple. {Negundo aceroides, Mosnch, in Gray's " Manual.") Trees with 

 pinnately 3-5-foliate leaves. Flowers dicecious, appearing shortly before the leaves, 

 greenish in drooping clusters. Along streams. 



n. STAPHYLEA. Bladder Nut. 



(Gr., sta^hyle, a cluster.) 



Upright shrubs, with opposite, 3-foliate, or pinnate leaves and pani- 

 cles or racemes of white flowers terminating branchlets of the current 

 season. Lobes of the 5-parted calyx erect and whitish ; petals j, 

 inserted on the margin of a thick disk at the base of the calyx. Sta- 

 mens 5, alternating with the petals. Carpels 3, united along their inner 

 faces, and forming in fruit a 3-lobed and 3-celled pod, membranous and 

 inflated. 



