1. BERCHÈMI, Necker. Supple-Jack.
Calyx with a very short and roundish tube; its lobes equalling the 5 oblong sessile acute petals, longer than the stamens. Disk very thick and flat, filling the calyx-tube and covering the ovary. Drupe oblong, with thin flesh and a bony 2-celled putamen.—Woody high-climbing twiners, with the pinnate veins of the leaves straight and parallel, the small greenish-white flowers in small panicles. (Name unexplained, probably personal.)
1. B. volùbilis, DC. Glabrous; leaves oblong-ovate, acute, scarcely serrulate; style short.—Damp soils, Va. to Ky. and Mo., and southward. June.—Ascending tall trees. Stems tough and very lithe, whence the popular name.
2. RHÁMNUS, Tourn. Buckthorn.
Calyx 4–5-cleft; the tube campanulate, lined with the disk. Petals small, short-clawed, notched at the end, wrapped around the short stamens, or sometimes none. Ovary free, 2–4-celled. Drupe berry-like (black), containing 2–4 separate seed-like nutlets, of cartilaginous texture.—Shrubs or small trees, with loosely pinnately veined leaves, and greenish polygamous or diœcious flowers, in axillary clusters. (The ancient Greek name.)
§ 1. RHAMNUS proper. Flowers usually diœcious; nutlets and seeds deeply grooved on the back; rhaphe dorsal; cotyledons foliaceous, the margins revolute.
[*] Calyx-lobes and stamens 5; petals wanting.
1. R. alnifòlia, L'Her. A low shrub; leaves oval, acute, serrate, nearly straight-veined; fruit 3-seeded.—Swamps, Maine to Penn., Neb., and northward. June.
[*][*] Calyx-lobes, petals, and stamens 4.
R. cathártica, L. (Common Buckthorn.) Leaves ovate, minutely serrate; fruit 3–4-seeded; branchlets thorny.—Cultivated for hedges; sparingly naturalized eastward. May, June. (Nat. from Eu.)