170 KEY AND FLORA 
very short. Petals 5, very deciduous. Stamens 5, filaments 
bent inward, anthers versatile. Ovary 2-celled or several- 
celled; styles or stigmas as many as the cells; ovules 1 in 
each cell. Fruit a drupe or berry. [The English ivy, an 
important member of the family, flowers too late for school 
study. ] 
ARALIA L. 
Perennial plants, with pungent or spicy roots, bark, and fruit. 
Leaves once or more compound. Flowers more or less mone- 
cious, white or greenish, in umbels. Drupe, berry-like. 
1. A. hispida Vent. Bristty SARSAPARILLA, WILD ELDER. Stem 
1-2 ft. high, rather shrubby below, with prickly bristles. Leaves 
once or twice pinnate; leaflets ovate, acute, cut-serrate, and often 
lobed. Peduncle bearing several umbels of cream-colored flowers, in- 
a terminal corymb. Fruit blue-black. Dry fields and pastures E. 
2. A. nudicaulis L. Wiip SarsAPARILLA. Perennial herb. Roots 
very long, somewhat fleshy, aromatic; stem very short or none. Leaf 
solitary, from a sheathing base, petioled, 6-12 in. long; compound in 
threes, each division 3—5-pinnate ; leaflets oval or ovate, taper-pointed, 
finely and sharply serrate, smooth above, often downy below. Scape 
nearly as long as the petiole, usually bearing 3 short, peduncled 
umbels. Flowers greenish. Styles distinct. Fruit globose, black. In 
rich woods. 
73. UMBELLIFERAE. Parstey FamiLy 
Herbs, usually with hollow, grooved stems. Flowers small, 
generally in umbels. Limb of the calyx either wanting or 
present only as a 5-toothed rim or margin around the top of 
the ovary. Petals 5. Stamens 5, inserted on the disk, which 
is borne by the ovary (Fig. 26). Ovary 2-celled and 2-ovuled 
(Fig. 26), ripening into 2 akene-like carpels, which separate 
from each other. Each carpel bears 5 longitudinal ribs, in 
the furrows between which secondary ribs frequently occur. 
On a cross section of the: fruit oil tubes are seen, traversing 
the interspaces between the ribs, and near the surface of the 
fruit (Fig. 26, D). The seeds contain a small embryo, inclosed 
in considerable endosperm. [The family is a difficult one, 
