1. EVONYMUS L.
Small generally glabrous trees or shrubs, with usually square sometimes wing-margined branchlets, bitter drastic bark, slender obtuse or acuminate winter-buds, and fibrous roots. Leaves opposite, petiolate, entire, crenate or dentate, deciduous or rarely persistent; stipules minute, caducous. Flowers perfect or polygamo-diœcious, in dichotomous axillary usually few-flowered cymes; calyx 4-lobed (in the North American arborescent species); disk thick and fleshy, cohering with and filling the short tube of the calyx, flat, 4-angled or lobed, closely surrounding and adhering to the ovary; petals inserted in the sinuses of the calyx under the free border of the disk, as many as and much longer than the calyx-lobes, spreading, deciduous; stamens as many as the petals and alternate with them, inserted on the summit of the disk; filaments very short, subulate, erect or recurved; anthers 2-celled, the cells nearly parallel or spreading below; ovary 4-celled; styles short, terminating in a depressed stigma; ovules usually 2 in each cell, ascending from the central angle; raphe ventral, micropyle inferior, or pendulous, the raphe then dorsal and the micropyle superior. Fruit capsular, 4-lobed and celled, fleshy, angled or winged, smooth (in the North American arborescent species), loculicidally 4-valved, the valves septicidal. Seeds 2 in each cell, or commonly solitary by abortion, ascending, surrounded by a colored aril; seed-coat chartaceous; albumen fleshy; embryo axile; cotyledons broad, coriaceous, parallel with the raphe; the radicle short, inferior.
Evonymus is widely distributed through the northern hemisphere, extending south of the equator to the islands of the Indian Archipelago and to Australia. About forty species are distinguished, the largest number occurring in the tropical regions of southern Asia, and in China and Japan. Of the four species found within the territory of the United States one only is a small tree. Many of the species are rich in bitter and astringent principles, and are drastic and slightly stimulant. Many are valued as ornaments of gardens and parks.
The generic name is from the classical name of one of the European species.
1. [Evonymus atropurpureus] Jacq. Bunting Bush. Wahoo.
Leaves ovate-elliptic, acuminate, minutely serrate or biserrate, thin, puberulous below, 2′—5′ long and 1′—2′ wide, with a stout midrib and primary veins; turning pale yellow in the autumn and falling in October; petioles stout, ½′—1′ in length. Flowers appearing from May to the middle of June, nearly ½′ across, in twice or thrice dichotomous usually 7—15-flowered cymes borne on slender peduncles 1′—2′ long and conspicuously marked by the scars of minute bracts; calyx-lobes 4, rounded or rarely acute at apex, mostly entire; petals broad-obovate, undulate, often erose on the margins; anthers spreading. Fruit ripening in October, usually persistent on the branches until midwinter, deeply lobed, ½′ across, with light purple valves; seeds sometimes gibbous on the dorsal side, broad and rounded above, narrowed below, ¼′ long, with a thin light chestnut-brown wrinkled coat and a thin scarlet aril.
A tree, rarely 20°—25° high, with a trunk 4′—6′ in diameter, spreading branches, and slender terete branchlets dark purple-brown at first, becoming lighter colored in their second season, often covered with small crowded lenticels, and marked by prominent leaf-scars, occasionally slightly or on vigorous shoots rarely broadly wing-margined; more often a shrub, 6°—10° tall. Winter-buds ⅛′ long, acute, with narrow purple apiculate scales scarious on the margins and covered by a glaucous bloom. Bark thin, ashy gray, and covered by thin minute scales. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, white tinged with orange.
Distribution. Borders of woods in rich soil; western New York to southern Minnesota, central Iowa, southeastern South Dakota, northwestern Nebraska, central Kansas, Oklahoma to the valley of the Canadian River (near Minton, Caddo County), southern Arkansas and eastern Texas (Dallas County), and southward to eastern Tennessee, Jackson County, Alabama, and western Florida; in the valley of the upper Missouri River, Montana; arborescent only in southern Arkansas and Texas.
Occasionally cultivated as an ornament of gardens in the eastern United States and in Europe.