XVIII. LAURACEÆ.
Aromatic trees and shrubs, with slender terete or angled branchlets, naked or scaly buds, and alternate punctate leaves without stipules. Flowers small, perfect or polygamo-diœcious, yellow or greenish; calyx 6-lobed, the lobes in 2 series, imbricated in the bud; corolla 0; stamens 9 or 12, inserted on the base or near the middle of the calyx in 3 or 4 series of 3’s, distinct; anthers 4-celled, superposed in pairs, opening from below upward by persistent lids; ovary 1-celled; stigma discoid or capitate; ovule solitary, suspended from the apex of the cell, anatropous. Fruit a 1-seeded berry; seed without albumen; testa thin and membranaceous, of 2 coats; embryo erect; cotyledons thick and fleshy; radicle superior, turned toward the hilum, included between thick and fleshy cotyledons. The Laurel family with about forty genera, confined mostly to the tropics, is represented in North America by seven genera; of these five are arborescent.
CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT GENERA.
Leaves entire, persistent; stamens 12, those of the inner row reduced to staminodes. Calyx-lobes persistent under the fruit, in our species.1. [Persea.] Calyx-lobes deciduous. Flower cymose in axillary or subterminal panicles.2. [Ocotea.] Flowers in axillary many-flowered umbels inclosed before anthesis in an involucre of deciduous scales.3. [Umbellularia.] Leaves entire or lobed, deciduous; stamens 9 in the American species; flowers in few-flowered drooping racemes.4. [Sassafras.] Leaves entire, persistent; stamens 9, those of the outer row fertile and united in a column inclosing the pistil; flowers in terminal or axillary cymose panicles.5. [Misanteca.]