1. S. cérnuus, L. Flowers white, fragrant; spike nodding at the end; bract lanceolate; filaments long and capillary.—Swamps, Conn. to Ont., Minn., Mo., and southward. June–Aug.
Order 93. LAURÀCEÆ. (Laurel Family.)
Aromatic trees or shrubs, with alternate simple leaves mostly marked with minute pellucid dots, and flowers with a regular calyx of 4 or 6 colored sepals, imbricated in 2 rows in the bud, free from the 1-celled and 1-ovuled ovary, and mostly fewer than the stamens; anthers opening by 2 or 4 uplifted valves.—Flowers clustered. Style single. Fruit a 1-seeded berry or drupe. Seed anatropous, suspended, with no albumen, filled by the large almond-like embryo.
[*] Flowers perfect, panicled; stamens 12, three of them sterile, three with extrorse anthers.
1. Persea. Calyx persistent. Anthers 4-celled. Evergreen.
[*][*] Flowers diœcious, or nearly so; stamens in the sterile flowers 9. Leaves deciduous.
2. Sassafras. Flowers in corymb- or umbel-like racemes. Anthers 4-celled, 4-valved.
3. Litsea. Flowers few in involucrate umbels. Anthers 4-celled, 4-valved.
4. Lindera. Flowers in umbel-like clusters. Anthers 2-celled, 2-valved.
1. PÉRSEA, Gaertn. Alligator Pear.