1. ÉMPETRUM, Tourn. Crowberry.
Flowers polygamous, scattered and solitary in the axils of the leaves (inconspicuous), scaly-bracted. Calyx of 3 spreading and somewhat petal-like sepals. Stamens 3. Style very short; stigma 6–9-rayed. Fruit a berry-like drupe, with 6–9 seed-like nutlets, each containing an erect anatropous seed. Embryo terete, in the axis of copious albumen, with a slender inferior radicle and very small cotyledons. (An ancient name, from ἐν, upon, and πέτρος, a rock.)
1. E. nìgrum, L. (Black Crowberry.) Procumbent and spreading; leaves linear-oblong, scattered; fruit black.—Newf., Mount. Desert and adjacent coast of Maine, alpine summits in N. Eng. and N. Y., L. Superior, and northward. (Eu.)
2. CORÈMA, Don. Broom-Crowberry.
Flowers diœcious or polygamous, collected in terminal heads, each in the axil of a scaly bract, and with 5 or 6 thin and scarious imbricated bractlets, but no proper calyx. Stamens 3, rarely 4, with long filaments. Style slender, 3- (or rarely 4–5-) cleft; stigmas narrow, often toothed. Drupe small, with 3 (rarely 4–5) nutlets. Seed, etc., as in the last.—Diffusely much-branched little shrubs, with scattered or nearly whorled narrowly linear heath-like leaves. (Name κόρημα, a broom, from the bushy aspect.)
1. C. Conrádii, Torr. Shrub 6´–2° high, diffusely branched, nearly smooth; drupe very small, dry and juiceless when ripe.—Sandy pine barrens and dry rocky places, N. J. and L. Island (?), Shawangunk Mts., N. Y., coast of S. E. Mass. and Maine, to Newf. The sterile plant is handsome in flower, on account of the tufted purple filaments and brown-purple anthers.
Order 106. CERATOPHYLLÀCEÆ. (Hornwort Family.)
Aquatic herbs, with whorled finely dissected leaves, and minute axillary and sessile monœcious flowers without floral envelopes, but with an 8–12-cleft involucre in place of a calyx, the fertile a simple 1-celled ovary, with a suspended orthotropous ovule, seed filled by a highly developed embryo with a very short radicle, thick oval cotyledons, and a plumule consisting of several nodes and leaves.—Consists only of the genus
1. CERATOPHÝLLUM. L. Hornwort.
Sterile flowers of 10–20 stamens, with large sessile anthers. Fruit an achene, beaked with the slender persistent style.—Herbs growing under water, in ponds or slow-flowing streams; the sessile leaves cut into thrice-forked thread-like rigid divisions (whence the name from κέρας, a horn, and φύλλον, leaf).