250 Phamnaceae 
RHAMNACEAE Buckthorn Family 
Shrubs or trees; branches sometimes spiny. Leaves simple, alternate or opposite: 
stipules minute. Flowers small, dioicous or monoicous or polygamous or perfect. Calyx- 
4—5-cleft. Petals none or distinct, each wrapped around a stamen, on the calyx-throat. 
Stamens as many as calyx-lobes, alternate with them. Ovary |, superior or partly inferior, 
2—4-celled, cells 1-ovuled; styles*more or less united into 1; stigmas 2—4. Fruit either 
fleshy or dry and the carpels at length separating. 
A. Calyx and disk free from the ovary; calyx-lobes erect or spreading; fruit berry-like; 
flowers solitary or in umbels or cymes or racemes. RHAMNUsS (p. 250) 
AA. Calyx and disk adnate to the base of the ovary; calyx-lobes connivent; fruit dry 
or nearly so; flowers in panicles or corymbs. CEANOTHUS (p. 250) 
RHAMNUS BUCKTHORN 
Leaves alternate, pinnately veined, deciduous (ours) except occasionally on very 
young plants. Flowers small, axillary, cymose or racemose or paniculate, perfect or 
polygamous. Calyx-tube urn-shaped; calyx-limb 4—5-toothed. Petals 4—5 or none.. 
Disk free from the ovary. Ovary 3—4-celled; style 3—4-cleft. Fruit berry-like, oblong 
or globose, containing 2—4 separate nutlets or stones. (Said to be from Celtic rham—a 
tuft of branches; Gk. rhamnos—the name of these plants.) 
A. Leaves acute at each end; petals none; seed grooved on the back; plants 0.6—1.2 
m. high. E. R. alnifolia L’Her. 
AA. Leaves acute at one end or at neither ; petals De small; seed not grooved on the 
back; plants 0.6—I15 m. high. 
B. Plant 5 m. or less high; leaves not undulate, somewhat revolute at margin; carpels 
Sale R. californica Esch. 
BB. Plants 15 m. or less high; leaves often undulate; not revolute at margin; car- 
pels 2, W.C. E. (R. occidentalis.) 
f i purshiane, DC. (Cascara) 
CEANOTHUS RED-ROOT 
Leaves pinnately veined or with several chief veins from the base. Flowers in lat- 
eral ard terminal dense thyrsoid panicles or corymbs. Calyx 5-cleft: lobes acute, de- 
ciduous; tube persistent, turbinate or hemispheric. Disk thick. Petals 5, longer than the 
calyx, saccate, arched, long-clawed. Styles 3, somewhat united below. Fruit sub- 
globose, 3-lobed, surrounded at base by the adherent calyx-tube, soon dry; the 3 crusta- 
ceous nutlets ultimately separating and dehiscing. (Gk. keanothos—the name of a kind 
of thistle; probably transferred on account of the spiny branches of some. ) 
A. All of the leaves alternate, with 3 chief veins from the base, glandular-toothed or 
entire; fruit not crested. 
B. Flcwers in thyrses; leaves often longer than 30 mm.: branches not strikingly 
rigid, not spiny. 
C. Leaves evergreen, shining above as if ‘varnished, sticky above, with strong cin- 
namon odor; flowers white. W.C.E. (C. laevigatus.) 
C. velutinus Dougl. (Mountain Balm) 
CC. Leaves deciduous, not as if varnished above, not sticky above, without strong 
odor. 
D. Leaves ovate to elliptic; flowers white; twigs terete. W. C. E. 
Cc fanguineus Pursh (Buck-brush) 
SS 
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