520 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
FAMILY XXXVITII. THE BARBERRY FAMILY. BERBERIDA- 
CEA. R. Brown. 
A family containing eleven or twelve genera of herbs or shrubs 
of very various appearance and character, frequently thorny, 
with alternate, petiolate, pinnate or simple leaves, often with 
spiny or pointed serratures, with yellow, white or red flowers; 
mostly natives of mountainous places in the temperate parts of 
the northern and southern hemispheres, and of the mountains 
of tropical America. The sepals are deciduous, from 3 or 4 to 
9, in 1, 2, 3 or 4 series, often colored; the petals as many as the 
sepals and opposite them, or twice as many, frequently glandu- 
lar or appendaged at base within; stamens as many as the petals 
and opposite them or twice as many, with their anthers opening 
with recurved valves, that is, each lobe of the anther opening at 
the edge throughout, except at the upper point, where it remains 
attached and rises to allow the pollen to escape; filaments 
often irritable. The ovary is solitary, 1-celled. Berry or cap- 
sule 1-celled, 1- or few-seeded. 
The berries of some of the species abound in an agreeable 
oxalic acid; the bark of the same is bitter and astringent. Others 
have purgative properties. 
THE BARBERRY. BERBERIS. L. 
A. genus of about forty species of shrubs, belonging to the tem- 
perate regions of both hemispheres, or to high mountains within 
the tropics; either with the primary leaves wanting or changed 
into single or compound spines in the axil of which the second- 
ary leaves, formed by the developement of the leaf-buds and 
simple, are in rosettes or tufts; or with the primary leaves de- 
veloped and pinnate; often with minute stipules; flowers yellow, 
with irritable filaments. The sepals are 9, in 8 scrics, the 3 
exterior, small, bract-like; the petals 6, with 2 glands at the 
base; stamens 6; stigma orbicular, nearly sessile; fruit a 1- to 
9-seeded berry with erect seeds. ‘The wood of the root and the 
inner bark of the stem are of a bright yellow, and abound in 
