ILEX. 
13 
now usually reduced by lopping to a shr. 8-10 ft. high. Trunk 
as thick as "the arm or leg, straight, erect, and with the branches 
evenly cylindric with a smooth cinereous or greyish bark 
blotched with large w. or pale cinereous patches. Foliage 
dense, dark blackish gr. and shining. L. subacute or more or 
less acuminate but not mucronate or pungently apiculate or 
spinose at the tip, 1-3| in. long, |-1§ in. broad, moderately stiff 
and rigid but not thick, plain not undulate ; the upper thicker 
or stiffer and always perfectly entire much like those of I. Aqui- 
folium L., but sometimes those of the undergrowth or lower 
barren branches more or less irregularly spinuloso-serrulate and 
then rarely tipped also with a small weak flexible (not hard 
pungent) spinule ; all dark gr. and shining above, paler or 
brighter gr. and without lustre beneath, the nerves and their 
submarginal loops on both sides quite inconspicuous and obso- 
lete, more or less attenuate at the base into the petioles, which 
are 4 or 5 lines long or from ^ to £ the length of the 1. and 
grooved or channelled above. Inflorescence normally cymose, 
as in Catha cassinoides Herit. FI. small pure w. strong-scented 
like Privet ( Ligustrimi vulgare L.) or Black-thorn ( Primus spi- 
nosa L.), in shortly stalked terminal and axillary cymes shorter 
than the 1. at or towards the ends of the terminal or last year’s 
shoots; sometimes intermixed with or all rarely reduced to 1-fid. 
ped. Cymes erect or erecto-patent on short square or angular 
slender gr. stalks, 1-4 together from each axil, |-1 in. long, fork- 
branched, leafless, with a minute bractlet at each division, 3 or 
5-10 or 12-fld. ; the whole with the pedicels and cal. quite 
smooth. FI. 3 or 4 lines in diam., all but the central primary 
or axile one ultimately abortive i. e. marcescent and deciduous 
with their stalks and branches. Sep. and pet. 4, rarely 5, both 
blunt, rounded, the former wholly smooth (not ciliolulate) with 
sphacelate brown edges, the latter pure w. round concave. 
Anth. presently dark purplish coffee-brown, their fil. thick flat 
smooth pure w. Cal. G-toothed smooth, in fr. persistent. Ov. 
ovato-globose mostly small short or depressed and scarcely 
rising out of the throat of cor. or base of stam. Berries dark 
shining vermilion or coral-red, ultimately almost black, globose 
or depressedly globose, 9 mill, in diam., each solitary (or very 
rarely binate) on an erectly ascending square or angular slender 
continuous ped. G-9 lines long and mostly 1- or 2-scarred oppo- 
sitel}'' at or about the middle with the marks or remains of its 
former marcescent deciduous side-branches; remaining at the top 
of the preceding year’s branches till the fi. appear at the top of 
the terminal last year’s shoots. Flesh or pulp of berries y., 
soon turning at first olive-brown, then inky- black and viscous. 
Seeds 4 large hard and bony triangularly oblong, the back 
rounded and grooved down the middle, the 2 sides flat ; pale 
yellowish, 3 lines long, 1^ broad at the back. 
