88 
WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND TREES. 
The Spindle-tree {Euonymus europaics). 
The Spindle is right on the borderland between trees and 
shrubs, for though it will grow into a tree twenty feet high, yet 
our hedgerow specimens are usually bushlike, and only ten or 
twelve feet high. Until the autumn the Spindle, we fear, is 
rarely recognized as such, but gets confused with Buckthorn and 
Dogwood. In October, however, its quaint fruits have changed 
to a pale crimson hue, which renders them the most con- 
spicuous feature of a hedgerow — even of one plentifully 
decorated with scarlet hips and haws and biymny-berries. 
The unusual tint of the Spindle, and the fact that it swings on 
a slender stalk, at once mark it out from the rigid-stalked hips 
and haws. 
The trunk of the Spindle is clothed in smooth grey bark. The 
twigs, which are in pairs, starting from opposite sides of a branch, 
are four-angled. The shining leaves vary from egg-shaped to 
lance-shaped, with finely-toothed edges. They are arranged in 
pairs, and in autumn they change to yellow and red. When 
bruised they give off a foetid odour, the juice is acrid, and said 
to be poisonous — a charge which is laid against the bark, flowers, 
and seed as well. The small greenish-white flowers are borne 
in loose clusters, of the type known as cymes, from the axils of 
the leaves, and appear in May and June. Some contain both 
stamens and pistil, but others are either stamenate pistillate. 
The caljTc is cut into four or six parts, the petals and stamens 
agree with these parts in number, but the lobes of the stigma only 
range from three to five, corresponding with the cells of the 
ovary. The fruit is deeply lobed, and marked with grooves, 
indicating the lines of future division, when the lobes open and 
disclose the seeds, at first covered with their orange jackets, 
or arils, after the manner of the mace that encloses the 
nutmeg. 
