2. ARCEUTHÒBIUM, Bieb.
Flowers axillary or terminal, solitary or several from the same axil. Calyx mostly compressed; the staminate usually 3-parted, the pistillate 2-toothed. Anthers a single orbicular cell, opening by a circular slit. Berry compressed, fleshy, on a short recurved pedicel.—Parasitic on Conifers, glabrous, with rectangular branches and connate scale-like leaves; flowers often crowded in apparent spikes or panicles, opening in summer or autumn and maturing fruit the next autumn. (From ἄρκευθος, the juniper, and βίος, life.)
1. A. pusíllum, Peck. Very dwarf, the slender scattered or clustered stems 3–10´´ high, usually simple, olive-green to chestnut; scales obtuse; flowers solitary in most of the axils; fruit narrowly oblong, 1´´ long.—On Abies nigra; N. New York; Hanover, N. H. (Jesup).
Order 97. SANTALÀCEÆ. (Sandalwood Family.)
Herbs, shrubs, or trees, with entire leaves; the 4–5-cleft calyx valvate in the bud, its tube coherent with the 1-celled ovary, which contains 2–4 ovules suspended from the apex of a stalk-like free central placenta which rises from the base of the cell, but the (indehiscent) fruit always 1-seeded.—Seed destitute of any proper seed-coat. Embryo small, at the apex of copious albumen; radicle directed upward; cotyledons cylindrical. Stamens equal in number to the lobes of the calyx, and inserted opposite them into the edge of the fleshy disk at their base. Style 1. A small order, the greater part belonging to warm regions.
1. Comandra. Flowers perfect, in umbel-like clusters. Low herbaceous perennials.
2. Pyrularia. Flowers diœcious or polygamous, in short spikes or racemes. Shrub.
1. COMÁNDRA, Nutt. Bastard Toad-flax.
Flowers perfect. Calyx bell-shaped or soon urn-shaped, lined above the ovary with an adherent disk which has a 5-lobed free border. Stamens inserted on the edge of the disk between its lobes, opposite the lobes of the calyx, to the middle of which the anthers are connected by a tuft of thread-like hairs. Fruit drupe-like or nut-like, crowned by the persistent calyx-lobes, the cavity filled by the globular seed.—Low and smooth (sometimes parasitic) perennials, with herbaceous stems from a rather woody base or root, alternate and almost sessile leaves, and greenish-white flowers in terminal or axillary small umbel-like clusters. (Name from κόμη, hair, and ἄνδρες, for stamens, in allusion to the hairs on the calyx-lobes which are attached to the anthers.)
1. C. umbellàta, Nutt. Stem 8–10´ high, branched, very leafy; leaves oblong, pale (1´ long); peduncles several and corymbose-clustered at the summit, several-flowered; calyx-tube conspicuously continued as a neck to the dry globular-urn-shaped fruit; the lobes oblong; style slender.—Dry ground, common. May, June. Root forming parasitic attachments to the roots of trees.