Sepals 3, reflexed. Petals 6, in two rows, making a bell-shaped corolla. Anthers linear, opening outward. Pistils flat and scale-form, long and narrow, imbricating and cohering together in an elongated cone, dry, separating from each other and from the long and slender axis in fruit, and falling away whole, like a samara or key, indehiscent, 1–2-seeded in the small cavity at the base. Buds flat, sheathed by the successive pairs of flat and broad stipules joined at their edges, the folded leaves bent down on the petiole so that the apex points to the base of the bud. (Name from λίριον, lily or tulip, and δένδρον, tree.)
1. L. Tulipífera, L.—Rich soil, S. New Eng. to Mich., Wisc., and southward. May, June.—A most beautiful tree, sometimes 140° high and 8–9° in diameter in the Western States, where it is wrongly called White Poplar. Leaves very smooth, with 2 lateral lobes near the base, and 2 at the apex, which appears as if cut off abruptly by a broad shallow notch. Petals 2´ long, greenish-yellow marked with orange. Cone of fruit 3´ long.
Order 3. ANONÀCEÆ. (Custard-Apple Family.)
Trees or shrubs, with naked buds and no stipules, a calyx of 3 sepals, and a corolla of 6 petals in two rows, valvate in the bud, hypogynous, polyandrous.—Petals thickish. Anthers adnate, opening outward; filaments very short. Pistils several or many, separate or cohering in a mass, fleshy or pulpy in fruit. Seeds anatropous, large, with a crustaceous seed-coat, and a minute embryo at the base of the ruminated albumen.—Leaves alternate, entire, feather-veined. Flowers axillary, solitary.—A tropical family, excepting the following genus:—
1. ASÍMINA, Adans. North American Papaw.
Petals 6, increasing after the bud opens; the outer set larger than the inner. Stamens numerous in a globular mass. Pistils few, ripening 1–4 large and oblong pulpy several-seeded fruits. Seeds horizontal, flat, enclosed in a fleshy aril.—Shrubs or small trees with unpleasant odor when bruised, the lurid flowers solitary from the axils of last year's leaves. (Name from Asiminier, of the French colonists, from the Indian name assimin.)
1. A. tríloba, Dunal. (Common Papaw.) Leaves thin, obovate-lanceolate, pointed; petals dull-purple, veiny, round-ovate, the outer ones 3–4 times as long as the calyx.—Banks of streams in rich soil, western N. Y. and Penn. to Ill., S. E. Neb., and southward. April, May.—Tree 10–20° high; the young shoots and expanding leaves clothed with a rusty down, soon glabrous. Flowers appearing with the leaves, 1½´ wide. Fruits 3–4´ long, yellowish, sweet and edible in autumn.
Order 4. MENISPERMÀCEÆ. (Moonseed Family.)
Woody climbers, with palmate or peltate alternate leaves, no stipules, the sepals and petals similar, in three or more rows, imbricated in the bud; hypogynous, diœcious, 3–6-gynous; fruit a 1-seeded drupe, with a large or long curved embryo in scanty albumen.—Flowers small. Stamens several. Ovaries nearly straight, with the stigma at the apex, but often incurved in fruiting, so that the seed and embryo are bent into a crescent or ring.—Chiefly a tropical family.
[*] Sepals and petals present. Anthers 4-celled. Seed incurved.