_Shrubs or small trees, with simple leaves, small and regular flowers (sometimes apetalous), with the 4 or 5 perigynous stamens as many as the valvate sepals and alternate with them, accordingly opposite the petals! Drupe or pod with only one erect seed in each cell, not arilled._--Petals folded inwards in the bud, hooded or concave, inserted along with the stamens into the edge of the fleshy disk which lines the short tube of the calyx and sometimes unites it to the lower part of the 2--5-celled ovary. Ovules solitary, anatropous. Stigmas 2--5. Embryo large, with broad cotyledons, in sparing fleshy albumen.--Flowers often polygamous, sometimes diœcious. Leaves mostly alternate; stipules small or obsolete. Branches often thorny. (Slightly bitter and astringent; the fruit often mucilaginous, commonly rather nauseous or drastic.) [*] Calyx and disk free from the ovary. 1. Berchemia. Petals sessile, entire, as long as the calyx. Drupe with thin flesh and a 2-celled bony putamen. 2. Rhamnus. Petals small, short-clawed, notched, or none. Drupe berry-like, with 2--4 separate seed-like nutlets. [*][*] Calyx with the disk adherent to the base of the ovary. 3. Ceanothus. Petals long-clawed, hooded. Fruit dry, at length dehiscent. 1. BERCHÈMI, Necker. SUPPLE-JACK. Calyx with a very short and roundish tube; its lobes equalling the 5 oblong sessile acute petals, longer than the stamens. Disk very thick and flat, filling the calyx-tube and covering the ovary. Drupe oblong, with thin flesh and a bony 2-celled putamen.--Woody high-climbing twiners, with the pinnate veins of the leaves straight and parallel, the small greenish-white flowers in small panicles. (Name unexplained, probably personal.) 1. B. volùbilis, DC. Glabrous; leaves oblong-ovate, acute, scarcely serrulate; style short.--Damp soils, Va. to Ky. and Mo., and southward. June.--Ascending tall trees. Stems tough and very lithe, whence the popular name. 2. RHÁMNUS, Tourn. BUCKTHORN. Calyx 4--5-cleft; the tube campanulate, lined with the disk. Petals small, short-clawed, notched at the end, wrapped around the short stamens, or sometimes none. Ovary free, 2--4-celled. Drupe berry-like (black), containing 2--4 separate seed-like nutlets, of cartilaginous texture.--Shrubs or small trees, with loosely pinnately veined leaves, and greenish polygamous or diœcious flowers, in axillary clusters. (The ancient Greek name.) § 1. RHAMNUS proper. _Flowers usually diœcious; nutlets and seeds deeply grooved on the back; rhaphe dorsal; cotyledons foliaceous, the margins revolute._ [*] _Calyx-lobes and stamens 5; petals wanting._ 1. R. alnifòlia, L'Her. A low shrub; leaves oval, acute, serrate, nearly straight-veined; fruit 3-seeded.--Swamps, Maine to Penn., Neb., and northward. June. [*][*] _Calyx-lobes, petals, and stamens 4._