JUGLANDACE^. (WALNTJT FAMILY.) 447 



1. PLATANTJS, L. Plane-tkee. Buttonwood. 



Sterile flowers of numerous stamens, with club-shaped little scales intermixed : 

 filaments very short. Fertile flowers in separate catkins, consisting of inversely 

 pyramidal ovaries mixed with little scales. Style rather lateral, awl-shaped or 

 thread-like, simple. Nutlets coriaceous, small, tawny-hairy below, containing 

 a single orthotropous pendulous seed. Embrj'o in the axis of thin albumen. 

 (The ancient name, from irXaris, broad.) 



1. P. OCCidentMis, L. (American Plane or Sycamore.) Leaves 

 mostly truncate at base, angularly sinuate-Iobed or toothed, the short lobes 

 sharp-pointed; fertile heads solitary, hanging on a long peduncle. — Alluvial 

 banks : very common, especially westward. May. — A very large and well- 

 known tree, with a white bark, separating early in thin brittle plates. 



Order 101. JlIOLiANDACEiE. (Walnut Family.) 



Trees, mth alternate pinnate leaves, and no stipules ; flowers monaeious, 

 the sterile in catkins (aments') with an irregular calyx adnate to the bract ; 

 the fertile solitary or in a small cluster or spike, with a regular 3 - 5-lobed 

 calyx adherent to the incompletely 2 - i-celled but only 1-ovuled ovary. Fruit 

 a kind of dry drupe, with a crustaceous or bony nut-shell, containing a large 

 i-lobed orthotropous seed. Albumen none. Cotyledons fleshy and oily, 

 sinuous or corrugated, 2-lobed : radicle short, superior. Petals sometimes 

 present in the fertile flowers. — A small family of important trees, consist- 

 ing chiefly of the two following genera. 



1. jtJGLANS, L. Walnut. 



Sterile flowers in long and simple lateral catkins from the wood of the preced- 

 ing year ; the calyx adherent to the entire bracts or scales, unequally 3 - 6-cleft. 

 Stamens 12-40 : filaments free, very short. Fertile flowers solitary or several 

 together on a peduncle at the end of the branches, with a 4-toothed calyx, bear- 

 ing 4 small petals at the sinuses. Styles 2, very short: stigmas 2, somewhat 

 club-shaped and fringed. Fruit with a fibrous-fleshy indehiscent epicarp, and a 

 mostly rough irregularly furrowed endocarp or nut-shell. — Trees, with strong- 

 scented or res-inous-aromatic bark, few-scaled or almost naked buds (3 or 4 su- 

 perposed, and the uppermost far above the axil), odd-pinnate leaves of many 

 serrate leaflets ; and the embryo sweet and edible. Pith in plates. (Name con- 

 tracted from Jovis glans, the nut of Jupiter. ) 



1. J. Cin^rea, L. (Butternut.) Leaflets oblong-lanceolate, pointed, 

 rounded at the base, downy, especially underneath, the petioles and branchlets 

 downy with clammy hairs; fruit oblong, clammy, pointed, the nut deeply sculptured 

 and rough with ragged ridges, 2-celled at the base. — Rich woods: common. 

 May : fruit ripe in Sept. — Tree 30° - 50° high, with gray bark and widely 

 spreading branches ; wood lighter brown than in the next. 



2. J. nigra, L. (Black Walnut.) Leaves ovate-lanceolate, taper-pointed, 

 somewhat heart-shaped or unequal at the base, smooth above, the lower surface 



