4. NEGÚNDO, Moench. Ash-leaved Maple. Box-Elder.
Flowers diœcious. Calyx minute, 4–5-cleft. Petals none. Stamens 4–5. Disk none.—Sterile flowers in clusters on capillary pedicels, the fertile in drooping racemes, from lateral buds. Leaves pinnate, with 3 or 5 leaflets. Fruit as in Acer. (Name unmeaning.)
1. N. aceroìdes, Moench. Leaflets smoothish when old, very veiny, ovate, pointed, toothed; fruit smooth, with large rather incurved wings.—River-banks, W. New Eng. to Dak., south and westward. April.—A small but handsome tree, with light-green twigs, and very delicate drooping clusters of small greenish flowers, rather earlier than the leaves.
5. STAPHYLÈA, L. Bladder-Nut.
Calyx deeply 5-parted, the lobes erect, whitish. Petals 5, erect, spatulate, inserted on the margin of the thick perigynous disk which lines the base of the calyx. Stamens 5, alternate with the petals. Pistil of 3 several-ovuled carpels, united in the axis, their long styles lightly cohering. Pod large, membranaceous, inflated, 3-lobed, 3-celled, at length bursting at the summit; the cells containing 1–4 bony anatropous seeds. Aril none. Embryo large and straight, in scanty albumen, cotyledons broad and thin.—Upright shrubs, with opposite pinnate leaves of 3 or 5 serrate leaflets, and white flowers in drooping raceme-like clusters, terminating the branchlets. Stipules and stipels deciduous. (Name from σταφυλή, a cluster.)
1. S. trifòlia, L. (American Bladder-nut.) Leaflets 3, ovate, pointed.—Thickets, in moist soil. May.—Shrub 10° high, with greenish striped branches.
Order 30. ANACARDIÀCEÆ. (Cashew Family.)
Trees or shrubs, with resinous or milky acrid juice, dotless alternate leaves, and small, often polygamous, regular, 5-merous flowers, but the ovary 1-celled and 1-ovuled, with 3 styles or stigmas.—Petals imbricated in the bud. Fruit mostly drupaceous. Seed without albumen, borne on a curved stalk that rises from the base of the cell. Stipules none. Juice or exhalations often poisonous.
1. RHÚS, L. Sumach.
Calyx small, 5-parted. Petals 5. Stamens 5, inserted under the edge or between the lobes of a flattened disk in the bottom of the calyx. Fruit small and indehiscent, a sort of dry drupe.—Leaves usually compound. Flowers greenish-white or yellowish. (The old Greek and Latin name.)