XXXIV. CELASTRACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and opposite or alternate simple persistent or deciduous leaves, with or without stipules. Flowers regular, perfect, polygamous or diœcious, pedicellate in axillary clusters; calyx 4—5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; petals 4 or 5, imbricated in the bud; stamens 4 or 5; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary 2—5-celled; ovules 2 or solitary in each cell (6 in Canotia), anatropous, or subhorizontal (in Canotia). Fruit a capsule or drupe. Seed with copious albumen; embryo axile.
A family of about thirty-eight genera widely distributed over the tropical and warm temperate parts of the world, with five arborescent representatives in the United States.
CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES.
Leaves opposite, deciduous; parts of the flower in 4’s; fruit a fleshy capsule enclosed in a colored aril.1. [Evonymus.] Leaves alternate, persistent (0 in 3). Fruit capsular; parts of the flower in 5’s. Capsule 3—4-valved, loculicidal, its outer coat woody, the valves apiculate at apex; base of the seed enclosed in a colored aril.2. [Maytenus.] Capsule 5-valved, septicidal, its outer coat thin and fleshy, the valves 2-lobed at apex; seed without an aril.3. [Canotia.] Fruit drupaceous; parts of the flower in 4’s; seed without an aril. Leaves often crenately serrate above the middle; stipules minute, caducous; fruit usually 1-seeded; branchlets quadrangular.4. [Gyminda.] Leaves entire; stipules 0; fruit 2-seeded; branchlets terete.5. [Schæfferia.]