Euonymus.] celastrace/e. 105 



W. Med. — Toll Copse and elsewhere about Gatcombe, common. Very large 

 and abundant at Swainstnn, rising there to small trees, of great regularity in growth 

 and outline. Plentiful about Shorwell, at Northcuuvt. Woods about Rowledge. 



/3. Swainstou Park &c. A ciimmon state of the shrub. 



A shrub or low tree, from 5 to 10 I'eet high, or even more in the wild state, in 

 gardens olten exceeding 30 feet, the smaller and younger branches quadrangular 

 and covered with a greenish cuticle, the larger and lower rounded and clothed 

 like the trunk. Leaves opposite, occasionally subalternate or subfascicnlate, 

 shortly stalked, ovale to ovato-lanceolate or oblungo-lanceolate, acute or acumi- 

 nate, rounded or atienuuted at base, those near the foot of the minor branches 

 often partly obovate or elliptical, obtuse, smaller than the rest ; finely and evenly 

 crenulato-serrulate, quite glabrous, of a full, deep, often as in j3. shining, green, 

 when they bear some resemblance to those of the Chinese tea-tree. Stipules very 

 small, subulate, extremely fugacious. Peduncles axillary, solitary or opposite, 

 sometimes lateral, rigid, erect, patent or reflexed, compressed or divaricately forked 

 at summit into from 2 — 5 single-flowered pedicels, that are unequal, stiff, variously 

 spreading or deflexed, not elongated in fruit. Floxvers greenish while, f of an 

 inch across, in this our only British species almost always tetrapeliilous and tetran- 

 drous, at least the later and more numerous, fur the primordial blossoms are said 

 to be as constantly 5-cleft and pentandrous. Bracts solitary, subulate, minute 

 and deciduous at the base of the pedicels. Petals greenish white, broad at the 

 base, ovate and slightly pointed, but on full expansion appearing narrow or lan- 

 ceolate from reflexion of their margins, inserted beneath the fleshy perigynous 

 disk, much exceeding the very short, round, concave and reflexed sepals. Sta- 

 mens short, erect, inserted alternately with the petals on the lobes of the perigy- 

 nous disk ; anthei-s reddish, 2-lobed, bursting outwardly alcn>; their edges. Style 

 short, furrowed and conical. Ovary quadrangular. Capsule smooth, coriaceous, 

 of a fine pink or rose-cniour, sometimes waxy white, 4- or 5-lobed, the angles 

 obtuse, not at all winged, often unequal ; 4- or 5-cel!ed, the cells 1-, or more 

 rarely 2-seeded, often partly abortive, widely dehiscing at the corners, and disclos- 

 ing the white or purplish, ovoid and pointed seeds, completely invested with a 

 bright, orange-coloured, wrinkled arillus. Embryo green, in the centre of the 

 large fleshy albumen ; cotyledons orbicular, flat; radicle inferior, cylindrical, 

 exserted. 



The capsules remain hanging on the tree long after the leaves have fallen. In 

 ' English Botany' the capsule is drawn as if broadly winged, which I never saw 

 nor heard of its being in our British species, though decidedly the case in E lati- 

 folius. Has the fruit of this last been inadvertently substituted for E. europaus 

 in the separate figure of the seed-vessel ? 



This is ihe only one of the three species of Spindle-tree indigenous to the con- 

 tinent, that inhabits indiff'erently the plains of Eastern and Western Europe and 

 its islands. The remaining: two, E. latifolius and E. verrucosus, are wanting to 

 all its Atlantic or Oceanic Floras, and belong exclusively to the interior countries 

 of the South and East, where they are subalpine shrubs, though the latter descends 

 to the sea-level towards ils North-eastern limit in Poland and Eussia, whilst the 

 former is, I believe, essentially a mountain species, nowhere lo be found sponta- 

 neous at inconsiderable altitudes. The E. atropurpureus, Burning Bush of N. 

 America, is the analogue in that country of the European E. latifolius, which it 

 resembles in flower.s, leaves and general habit, whilst the fruit is nearly that of 

 our present species, but more deeply lobed, and the arils of the seed are rather 

 crimson than orange. In like manner the E. verrucosus of Europe finds its 

 trans-Atlantic representative in E. americanus, which resembles the former in 

 many particulars of fruit, leaves and inflorescence. 



