XXXIII. AQUIFOLIACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, scaly buds, and alternate simple entire crenate or pungently toothed petiolate persistent or deciduous leaves, with minute stipules. Flowers axillary, solitary or cymose, small, greenish white, diœcious; calyx 4—6-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud, hypogynous; petals 4—6, oval or oblong, obtuse, free or united at base, imbricated in the bud; disk 0; stamens as many as and alternate with the petals and adnate to the base of the corolla; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally, small and sterile in the pistillate flower; pistil compound; ovary 4—8-celled, minute and rudimentary in the staminate flower; style short or 0; stigmas as many as the cells of the ovary, nearly confluent; ovule generally solitary in each cell, suspended, anatropous; raphe usually dorsal, the micropyle superior. Fruit a drupe, with as many indehiscent bony or crustaceous 1-seeded nutlets as carpels; sarcocarp thin and fleshy. Seed narrowed at the ends, suspended; seed-coat membranaceous, pale brown; embryo minute in the apex of the copious fleshy albumen; cotyledons plain; the radicle superior.
The Holly family with five genera is distributed in temperate and tropical regions of the two hemispheres. Of the five genera now recognized, only Ilex is important in the number of species or is widely distributed.