STAFF-TREE FAMILY 



Fruit. — Fleshy capsules, borne on long drooping peduncles deeply 

 four-lobed, angled, smooth, purple, loculicidally three to five-valved, 

 opening to discharge the seeds which are inclosed in a scarlet aril. 

 Ripen in October and hang upon the branch until midwinter. Co- 

 tyledons broad and coriaceous. 



Burning Bush is a satisfactory name for this shrub, which 

 retains its fiame-colored fruit long after the leaves have fal- 

 len and until the winter storms beat it to the ground. Each 

 separate seed-vessel develops a bright purple cover and open- 

 ing discloses a seed clothed in scarlet. When these are 

 borne in considerable numbers the bush is a conspicuous ob- 

 ject upon the lawn or in the forest. 



The Indians called the plant Waahoo, and used the wood in 

 the manufacture of arrows. Spindle-tree is a name brought 

 over seas and looks backward to a time when spinning and 

 weaving were done at home. The wood of the European 

 species of Euonymus being tough, close-grained and also 

 reasonably easy to work, became the favorite wood for the 

 making of spindles — whence the name. 



Euonymus is the old Greek name and signifies, of good 

 repute. Now, as a matter of fact, this particular individual 

 is a plant of bad repute, for the leaves, bark, and fruit are 

 acrid and poisonous. One can comprehend its name only 

 upon the theory of opposites, the principle upon which the 

 Greeks acted when they named the Furies, the Eumenides, 

 the well-wishers. 



The Burning Bush is not native to New England ; it is a 

 shrub in the middle and western states, and does not attain 

 the dignity of treehood until it appears in the bottom lands 

 of Arkansas and adjoining regions. It is interesting to note 

 that those trees which are distinctively native to our mid- 

 continental valley, reach their greatest development in the 

 southwest. On the banks of the Arkansas the Tulip-tree 

 reaches its one hundred and ninety feet, and there our little 

 Burning Bush, a shrub in northern fields and lawns, becomes 

 a tree twenty-five feet high with spreading branches. 



48 



