2. CÍSSUS, L.
Flowers perfect or sometimes polygamous, 4-merous or (in ours) 5-merous. Petals expanding. Disk cup-shaped, surrounding the base of the ovary. Berry inedible, with scanty pulp. Seeds usually triangular-obovate.—Tendrils in our species few and mostly in the inflorescence. A vast genus, mainly tropical. (Greek name of the Ivy.)
1. C. Ampelópsis, Pers. Nearly glabrous; leaves heart-shaped or truncate at the base, coarsely and sharply toothed, acuminate, not lobed; panicle small and loose; style slender; berries of the size of a pea, 1–3-seeded, bluish or greenish. (Vitis indivisa, Willd.)—River-banks, Va. to Ill., and southward. June.
2. C. stans, Pers. Nearly glabrous, bushy and rather upright; leaves twice pinnate or ternate, the leaflets cut-toothed; flowers cymose; calyx 5-toothed; disk very thick, adherent to the ovary; berries black, obovate. (Vitis bipinnata, Torr. & Gray.)—Rich soils, Va. to Mo., and southward.
3. AMPELÓPSIS, Michx. Virginian Creeper.
Calyx slightly 5-toothed. Petals concave, thick, expanding before they fall. Disk none.—Leaves digitate, with 5 (3–7) oblong-lanceolate sparingly serrate leaflets. Flower-clusters cymose. Tendrils fixing themselves to trunks or walls by dilated sucker-like disks at their tips. (Name from ἄμπελος, a vine, and ὄψις, appearance.)
1. A. quinquefòlia, Michx. A common woody vine, in low or rich grounds, climbing extensively, sometimes by rootlets as well as by its disk-bearing tendrils, blossoming in July, ripening its small blackish berries in October. Also called American Ivy, and still less appropriately, Woodbine. Leaves turning bright crimson in autumn.
Order 29. SAPINDÀCEÆ. (Soapberry Family.)
Trees or shrubs, with simple or compound leaves, mostly unsymmetrical and often irregular flowers; the 4–5 sepals and petals imbricated in æstivation; the 5–10 stamens inserted on a fleshy (perigynous or hypogynous) disk; a 2–3-celled and -lobed ovary, with 1–2 (rarely more) ovules in each cell; and the embryo (except Staphylea) curved or convolute, without albumen.—A large and diverse order.
Suborder I. Sapindeæ. Flowers (often polygamous) mostly unsymmetrical and irregular. Stamens commonly more numerous than the petals, rarely twice as many. Ovules 1 or 2 in each cell. Embryo curved or convolute, rarely straight; cotyledons thick and fleshy.—Leaves alternate or sometimes opposite, without stipules, mostly compound.