LX. OLEACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, scaly buds, their inner scales accrescent, opposite leaves, without stipules, and fibrous roots. Flowers perfect, diœcious or polygamous, regular; calyx 4-lobed, or 0; corolla of 2—4 petals, or 0; disk 0; stamens 2—4, rudimentary or 0 in unisexual pistillate flowers; anthers attached on the back below the middle, often apiculate by the prolongation of the connective, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally usually by lateral slits; ovary free, 2 or rarely 3-celled, rudimentary or 0 in the staminate flower; style simple; ovules 2 in each cell, pendulous, anatropous; micropyle superior. Fruit (in the North American arborescent genera) a samara or berry. Seed pendulous; seed-coat membranaceous; embryo straight in copious fleshy albumen; cotyledons flat, much longer than the short terete superior radicle turned toward the minute hilum.
The Olive family with twenty-five genera is widely distributed in temperate and tropical regions chiefly in the northern hemisphere. Of the five genera indigenous to the United States four are arborescent. To this family belong Olea europæa L., the Olive-tree of the Mediterranean basin, now largely cultivated in California for its fruit, and the Lilacs, Forsythias, Privets, and Jasmines, favorite garden plants in all countries with temperate climates.
CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES.
Fruit a winged samara; leaves usually compound.1. [Fraxinus.] Fruit a drupe; leaves simple. Flowers usually without petals.2. [Forestiera.] Flowers with petals. Corolla of 4 long linear petals united only at base; leaves deciduous.3. [Chionanthus.] Corolla tubular; leaves persistent.4. [Osmanthus.]