Exotic trees with white or greenish flowers. The only genera are the Poet’s Cassia (Osyris), and a genus of Australian plants called Exocarpos.
ORDER CLXIII.—SANTALACEÆ.
The most interesting plant is the Sandal-wood tree (Santalum album), which requires a stove in England; but the North American trees belonging to the genus Nyssa, including the Tupelo tree and the Ogechee Lime, are quite hardy. The flowers are small and insignificant; and the fruit is a drupe.
ORDER CLXIV.—ELÆAGNEÆ.
The three genera included in this order are the Sea Buckthorn (Hippophae), the Oleaster (Elæagnus), and the Shepherdia; all so easily recognised by their silvery foliage, as to need no particular description. The flowers are small and inconspicuous.
ORDER CLXV.—ASARINEÆ, OR ARISTOLOCHIEÆ.
The genus Aristolochia, or Birthwort, is remarkable for the very singular shape of its flowers, which are as strange, and as much varied, as it is possible for the wildest imagination to conceive. The flowers are tubular, with one lip much longer than the other; and the tube takes an abrupt bend near the middle. Here are six anthers, fixed very curiously on the outside of a club-shaped column, split into six lobes at the point. In the centre of this column is a style with a six-rayed stigma; and the fruit is a large capsule with six cells, which opens by as many slits, and discharges the numerous thin, flat, dark brown seeds.