Calyx salver-shaped or somewhat funnel-shaped, the border spreading and 4-lobed. Stamens 8, included; the anthers nearly sessile on the calyx-tube. Style very short or none; stigma capitate. Drupe red.—Hardy low shrub. (Mythological name of the nymph transformed by Apollo into a Laurel.)
D. Mezèreum, L. Shrub 1–3° high, with purple-rose-colored (rarely white) flowers, in lateral clusters on shoots of the preceding year, before the lanceolate very smooth green leaves; berries red.—Escaped from cultivation in Canada, Mass., and N. Y. Early spring. (Nat. from Eu.)
Order 95. ELÆAGNÀCEÆ. (Oleaster Family.)
Shrubs or small trees, with silvery-scurfy leaves and perfect or diœcious flowers; further distinguished from the Mezereum Family by the erect or ascending albuminous seed, and the calyx-tube becoming pulpy and berry-like in fruit, strictly enclosing the achene.
1. Elæagnus. Flowers perfect. Stamens 4. Leaves alternate.
2. Shepherdia. Flowers diœcious. Stamens 8. Leaves opposite.
1. ELÆÁGNUS, Tourn.
Flowers perfect. Calyx cylindric-campanulate above the persistent oblong or globose base, the limb valvately 4-cleft, deciduous. Stamens 4, in the throat. Style linear, stigmatic on one side. Fruit drupe-like, with an oblong, 8-striate stone.—Leaves alternate, entire and petioled, and flowers axillary and pedicellate. (From ἐλαία, the olive, and ἄγνος, sacred, the Greek name of the Chaste-tree, Vitex Agnus-castus.)
1. E. argéntea, Pursh. (Silver-Berry.) A stoloniferous unarmed shrub (6–12° high), the younger branches covered with ferruginous scales; leaves elliptic to lanceolate, undulate, silvery-scurfy and more or less ferruginous; flowers numerous, deflexed, silvery without, pale yellow within, fragrant; fruit scurfy, round-ovoid, dry and mealy, edible, 4–5´´ long.—N. W. Minn. to Utah and Montana.
2. SHEPHÉRDIA, Nutt.