140 WATER-MILFOIL FAMILY. 



42. HAMAMELACEiE, WITCH-HAZEL FAMILY. 



Shrubs or trees, with alternate simple leaves, deciduous stipules, 

 small flowers in heads, spikes, or little clusters, the calyx united 

 below with the base of the 2-styled ovary, which forms a hard or 

 woody 2-celIed and 2-beaked pod, opening at the summit. Sta- 

 mens and petals when pi-esent inserted on the calyx. Three wild 

 plants of the country, belonging to as many genera. 



^ 1. Shrubs, with perfect or merely polygamous flowers, a regular calyx, and a singln 

 ovule, becoming a bony seed, mspendedfrom the top of each cell. 



1. HAMAMELIS. Flowers in small clusters in the axils of the leaves, expanding 



late in autumn, ripening the seeds late the next summer. Calyx 4-parted. 

 Petals 4, strap-shaped. Stamens 8, very short; the 4 alternate with the pet- 

 als bearing anthers, the 4 opposite them imperfect and scale-like. Styles 

 short. Pod with an outer coat separating from the inner. 



2. FOTHERGILLA. Flowers in a soaly-bracted spike, in spring, rather earlier 



than the leaves. Calyx bell-shaped, slightly 5-7-toothed. Petals none. 

 Stamens about 24, rather showy, the long and club-shaped filaments bright 

 white. Styles slender. Pod hairy. 



§ 2. Tree, with monacious small flowers, in. dense heads or clusters, destitute both of 

 calyx and corolla, the fertile with many ovules in each cell, but only one or two 

 ripening into scale-like seeds. 



3. LIQUIDAMBAR. Heads of flowers each with a deciduous involucre of 4 bracts, 



the sterile in a conical cluster, consisting of numerous short stamens with 

 litMe scales intermixed; the fertile loosely racemed or spiked on a drooping 

 peduncle, composed of many ovaries (surrounded by some little scales), eacli 

 with 2 awl-shaped beaks, all cohering together and "hardening in fruit. 



1. HAMAMELIS, WITCH-HAZEL. (An old Greek name of Medlar, 

 inappropriately transferred to this wholly unlike American shrub.) 



H. Virginica. Tall shrub, of damp woods, with the leaves obovate or 

 oval, wavy-toothed, straight-veined like a Hazel, slightly downy ; the yellow 

 flowers remarkable for their appearance late in autumn, just as the leaves are 

 turning and about to fall. Seeds eatable. 



2. POTHEBGILLA. (NamedforDni^oiAerjffl of London, a friend and 

 correspondent of Bartram. ) 



F. alnif61ia. Low, rather ornamental shrub, in swamps, from Virginia S., 

 with oval or obovate straight-veined leaves, toothed at the summit and often 

 hoary beneath, the white tlowers in spring. 



3. LIQUIDAMBAR, SWEET-GUM TREE or BILSTED. (Names 

 allude to the fragrant terebinthine juice or balsam which exudes when the 

 trunk is wounded. ) 



L. Styraciflua, the only species of this country: a large and beautiful 

 tree in low grounds, from S. New England to 111. and especially S., with fine- 

 grained wood, gray bark forming corky ridges on the branches, and smooth and 

 glossy deeply 5 - 7-lobed leaves, which are fragrant when bruised, changing to 

 deep crimson in autumn, their triangular lobes pointed and beset with glandular 

 teeth : greenish flowers appearing with the leaves in early spring. 



43. HALORAGE.S!, WATEK^MILFOIL FAMILY. 



Contains a few insignificant aquatic or marsh plants, with small 

 greenish flowers sessile in the axils of the (often whorled) leaves 

 or bracts, and a single ovule and seed suspended in each of the 

 1-4 cells of the ovary. 



