A tree, in Florida sometimes 20°—25° high, with a tall trunk 2′—2½′ in diameter, small ascending branches forming an open irregular head, and stout or slender branchlets densely covered during their first season with rufous pubescence, and light reddish brown, slightly pubescent and marked by conspicuous leaf-scars in their second year; often a shrub.
Distribution. Florida, near Miami and on the Everglade Keys, Dade County, and on the southern keys; on the Bahama Islands and on several of the Antilles.
LXVI. CAPRIFOLIACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, opposite petiolate leaves involute in the bud, with or without stipules, scaly buds, and fibrous roots. Flowers regular, perfect, with articulated pedicels, in terminal compound cymes; calyx-tube adnate to the ovary, 5-toothed; corolla epigynous, 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens 5, inserted on the tube of the corolla, as many as and alternate with its lobes; filaments slender, free; anthers oblong, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; disk 0 (in the arborescent genera of the United States); ovary inferior or partly superior, 3—5 or 1-celled; style short, capitate, 3—5-lobed and stigmatic at apex; ovule solitary, suspended from the apex of the cell, resupinate; raphe dorsal; micropyle superior. Fruit drupaceous, crowned with the remnants of the style. Seeds with copious fleshy albumen; seed-coat membranaceous, adherent to the albumen; embryo minute, near the hilum; cotyledons ovoid or ovate; radicle terete, erect.
The Honeysuckle family with ten genera is most abundant in the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, with a few species extending into the tropics and to beyond the tropics in the southern hemisphere. Many of the species, especially of Lonicera, Sambucus, and Viburnum, are cultivated in gardens for the beauty of their flowers and fruits.
CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES.
Leaves unequally pinnate; fruit with 3—5 nutlets.1. [Sambucus.] Leaves simple; fruit with 1 stone.2. [Viburnum.]
1. SAMBUCUS L. Elder.
Trees or shrubs, with stout branches containing thick white or brown pith, and buds with several scales. Leaves petiolate, unequally pinnate, deciduous, with serrate or laciniate leaflets, the base of the petiole naked, glandular or furnished with a stipule-like leaflet; stipels small, leaf-like, usually setaceous, often 0; stipules small, rudimentary, usually 0 except on vigorous shoots. Flowers small, in broad terminal corymbose cymes, their bracts and bractlets lanceolate, acute, scarious, caducous, sometimes ebracteolate; calyx-tube ovoid, the limb 3—5-lobed or toothed; corolla rotate or slightly campanulate, equally 3—5-parted; filaments filiform or subulate; ovary inferior or partly superior, 3—5-celled; style abbreviated, thick and conic, 3—5-lobed, stigmatic at apex. Fruit subglobose, with juicy flesh, and 3—5 oblong cartilaginous punctate-rugulose or smooth 1-seeded nutlets full and rounded on the back and rounded at the ends. Seeds filling the cavity of the nutlets, pale brown; cotyledons ovoid.
Sambucus with about twenty species is widely and generally distributed through the temperate parts of North America, Europe, and Asia, and inhabits high mountain ranges within the tropics, and in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Of the nine or ten North American species three are arborescent. Sambucus possesses cathartic and emetic properties in the bark; the flowers are excitant and sudorific, and the juice of the fruit is alterative and laxative. The dried flowers of the European Sambucus nigra L., are used in the preparation of an aromatic distilled water and in flavoring lard, and the hard and compact wood is made into combs and mathematical instruments. The large pithy shoots of Sambucus furnish children with pop-guns, pipes, and whistles; and the fruit of some of the species is cooked and eaten.