4. Jeffersonia. Petals and stamens usually 8; anthers opening by uplifted valves. Pod opening by a lid.
5. Podophyllum. Petals 6–9. Stamens 12–18; anthers not opening by uplifted valves. Fruit a large berry.
1. BÉRBERIS, L. Barberry.
Sepals 6, roundish, with 2–6 bractlets outside. Petals 6, obovate, concave, with two glandular spots inside above the short claw. Stamens 6. Stigma circular, depressed. Fruit a 1–few-seeded berry. Seeds erect, with a crustaceous integument.—Shrubs, with yellow wood and inner bark, yellow flowers in drooping racemes, sour berries, and 1–9-foliolate leaves. Stamens irritable. (Derived from Berbêrys, the Arabic name of the fruit.)
1. B. Canadénsis, Pursh. (American Barberry.) Leaves repandly toothed, the teeth less bristly-pointed; racemes few-flowered; petals notched at the apex; berries oval; otherwise as in the next.—Alleghanies of Va. and southward; not in Canada. June.—Shrub 1–3° high.
B. vulgàris, L. (Common Barberry.) Leaves scattered on the fresh shoots of the season, mostly reduced to sharp triple or branched spines, from the axils of which the next season proceed rosettes or fascicles of obovate-oblong closely bristly-toothed leaves (the short petiole jointed!), and drooping many-flowered racemes; petals entire; berries oblong, scarlet.—Thickets and waste grounds in E. New Eng., where it has become thoroughly wild; elsewhere occasionally spontaneous. May, June. (Nat. from Eu.)
2. CAULOPHÝLLUM, Michx. Blue Cohosh.
Sepals 6, with 3 or 4 small bractlets at the base, ovate-oblong. Petals 6 thick and gland-like somewhat kidney-shaped or hooded bodies, with short claws, much smaller than the sepals, one at the base of each of them. Stamens 6; anthers oblong. Pistil gibbous; style short; stigma minute and unilateral; ovary bursting soon after flowering by the pressure of the 2 erect, enlarging seeds, and withering away; the spherical seeds naked on their thick seed-stalks, looking like drupes, the fleshy integument turning blue; albumen horny.—A perennial glabrous herb, with matted knotty rootstocks, sending up in early spring a simple and naked stem, terminated by a small raceme or panicle of yellowish-green flowers, and a little below bearing a large triternately compound sessile leaf (whence the name, from καυλός, stem, and φύλλον, leaf, the stem seeming to form a stalk for the great leaf.)
1. C. thalictroìdes, Michx. (Also called Pappoose-root.) Stems 1–2½° high; leaflets obovate wedge-form, 2–3-lobed, a smaller biternate leaf often at the base of the panicle; flowers appearing while the leaf is yet small.—Deep rich woods; common westward. April, May.—Whole plant glaucous when young, as also the seeds, which are as large as peas.
3. DIPHYLLÈIA, Michx. Umbrella-leaf.