Cornus (Dogwood, Cornel) has S4, P4, A4, G2. Leaves opposite.
Drupe with a bilocular, 2-seeded stone.—Aucuba, diœcious; unilocular ovary; 1 ovule; 1-seeded berry.—Garrya.—Helwingia.
80 species; N. Temp. The fruits of Cornus mas are edible; the wood is very hard; gum is found in some. Several species of Cornus and Aucuba japonica (Japan) are cultivated as ornamental shrubs.
Order 2. Araliaceæ (Ivies). Principally trees or shrubs with solid stems. The leaves are scattered, simple or compound, with a sheath more or less developed. The flowers are most frequently situated in umbels or capitula which are either borne singly or in racemes, or in paniculate inflorescences. The small, most frequently yellowish-green flowers are 5-merous, in the calyx, corolla, and andrœcium; the gynœceum may be 5-merous or may have some other number (2-∞). The styles are most frequently several, free; the raphe of the ovules is turned inwards as in the Umbelliferous plants. The fruit is a drupe or berry.—Stellate hairs often occur. The petals generally have a broad base, and a thick apex which is slightly incurved, and a distinctly valvate æstivation.
Hedera helix (Ivy) climbs by adventitious roots. The leaves are palminerved and lobed on the sterile branches, but often ovate and not lobed on the flowering branches. The flowers are yellowish-green and open in the autumn; they are slightly protandrous, and are visited by flies and wasps. Berries black. Endosperm ruminate.—Panax. Aralia (with Dimorphanthus).
375 species, 51 genera; especially in the Tropics (E. Asia).—The Ivy, several species of Aralia, e.g. A. japonica (Fatsia), Gastonia palmata, are cultivated as ornamental plants. Paper is manufactured from the pith of Aralia papyrifera (China).
Order 3. Umbelliferæ. The stem is herbaceous with hollow internodes; the leaves are scattered, and have a broad, amplexicaul base, a large, most frequently inflated sheath, and generally a pinnate (often very much dissected) blade. Entire leaves are found in Hydrocotyle vulgaris; Bupleurum.
The flowers are ☿, regular, small, but collected in compound umbels, that is, in “simple umbels,” which again are borne in umbels (for exceptions see Hydrocotyleæ); the external flowers in the simple umbel have often subtending bracts, which surround the base as an involucre, and may be termed the small involucre; the internal ones have no bracts; when involucral leaves are present at the base of the compound umbel, they may be termed the large involucre.
Fig. 528.—Daucus carota with flower and fruit.