478 FLOWERS OF FIELD, HILL, AND SWAMP 



mens, 5, with long, slender filaments, and yellow anthers open- 

 ing inward. Styles, 3, long as the stamens. Fruit, a 3-celled, 

 membranous pod, like 3 pods grown together, each tipped 

 with a style, nearly 2 inches long, bursting, when ripe, at the 

 top, and disclosing i to 4 bony seeds. These pods have a 

 smell like pea-pods. 



This is a large, irregular shrub, from 8 to 12 feet high, with its 

 flowers in drooping racemes, terminal or opposite in pairs, grow- 

 ing on the edges of damp woods. The bark of the older branches 

 is greenish brown, with lighter stripes. The main stem is gray, 

 with long white cracks in the bark. 



24. Poison Ivy. Poison Oak. Mercury-vine 



Rhus toxicodendron. — Family, Cashew. Color, greenish or 

 yellowish white. Leaves, of 3 variously shaped' leaflets on a 

 common long petiole. The terminal leaflet is stalked ; lateral 

 leaflets generally sessile. They are broadly ovate, wavy- 

 toothed, pointed, often lobed. Time, June. 



Sterile and fertile flowers on different plants. The former 

 have 5 sepals and petals, the outer ones greenish, the inner 

 white, veined with purple. 



Stamens, 5. The pistillate flowers have 5 greenish white 

 sepals, and 5 yellowish white petals. Fruit, a dull, whitish 

 berry. Flowers in loose panicles in the axils of the leaves. 



This too well-known climbing shrub is gaining ground in cer- . 

 tain sections of the country. Formerly it was unknown in New 

 England, but now it infests many farms and roadsides there, as in 

 New York and New Jersey. It flourishes in salt air, and in every 

 kind of soil. By means of tiny rootlets on its stem it climbs to 

 the very tops of high trees, enveloping their trunks in a mass of 

 hard-stemmed, 3-leaved foliage ; or it covers fences, stopping at 

 the posts for extra decorative effects. It carries itself flauntingly 

 and gaudily, in fall faintly imitating the Virginia creeper, with 

 sickly hues of red and yellow. When it cannot climb it masses 

 itself on the ground. 



