[*][*] Leaves coriaceous, evergreen and shining, often black-dotted beneath; fruit black.
9. I. glàbra, Gray. (Inkberry.) Leaves wedge-lanceolate or oblong, sparingly toothed toward the apex, smooth; peduncles (½´ long) of the sterile flowers 3–6-flowered, of the fertile 1-flowered; calyx-teeth rather blunt.—Sandy grounds, Cape Ann, Mass., to Va., and southward near the coast. June.—Shrub 2–3° high.
2. NEMOPÁNTHES, Raf. Mountain Holly.
Flowers polygamo-diœcious. Calyx in the sterile flowers of 4–5 minute deciduous teeth, in the fertile ones obsolete. Petals 4–5, oblong-linear, spreading, distinct. Stamens 4–5; filaments slender. Drupe with 4–5 bony nutlets, light red.—A much-branched shrub, with ash-gray bark, alternate and oblong deciduous leaves on slender petioles, entire or slightly toothed, smooth. Flowers on long slender axillary peduncles, solitary or sparingly clustered. (Name said by the author to mean "flower with a filiform peduncle," therefore probably composed of νῆμα, a thread, πούς, foot, and ἄνθος, flower.)
1. N. fasciculàris, Raf. (N. Canadensis, DC.)—Damp cold woods, from the mountains of Va. to Maine, Ind., Wisc., and northward. May.
Order 26. CELASTRÀCEÆ. (Staff-tree Family.)
Shrubs with simple leaves, and small regular flowers, the sepals and the petals both imbricated in the bud, the 4 or 5 perigynous stamens as many as the petals and alternate with them, inserted on a disk which fills the bottom of the calyx and sometimes covers the ovary. Seeds arilled.—Ovules one or few (erect or pendulous) in each cell, anatropous; styles united into one. Fruit 2–5-celled, free from the calyx. Embryo large, in fleshy albumen; cotyledons broad and thin. Stipules minute and fugacious. Pedicels jointed.
[*] Leaves alternate. Flowers in terminal racemes.
1. Celastrus. A shrubby climber. Fruit globose, orange, 3-valved. Aril scarlet.
[*][*] Leaves opposite. Flowers in axillary cymes or solitary.