_Oleaster Family_
Shrubs or trees mostly silvery-scaly or stellate-pubescent with entire
leaves and flowers clustered in the axils or at the nodes of twigs of
the preceding season; fruit drupe-like.
Stamens as many as the perianth parts; flowers perfect
or polygamous: leaves alternate. =Elæagnus.=
Stamens twice as many as the perianth parts; flowers
diœcious; leaves opposite. =Lepargyræa.=
[Sidenote: =Elæagnus argentea= Pursh. _Silver-Berry._]
A stoloniferous much branched shrub sometimes 12 feet high, the young
twigs covered with brown scurf, becoming silvery. Leaves oblong-ovate
or ovate-lanceolate, densely silvery-scurfy on both sides, acute or
obtuse short petioled, 1—4 inches long. Flowers usually numerous in
the axils of the leaves, fragrant, silvery, ½ an inch or more long;
perianth silvery without, yellowish within, the lobes ovate and short.
On the eastern slope of the Rockies, on the banks of the rivers and
streams, very abundant at Banff on the Bow and Spray rivers; flowering
in June.
[Sidenote: =Lepargyræa canadensis= (L.) Greene. _Canadian
Buffalo-Berry._]
A shrub 4—8 feet high, with brown-scurfy young shoots. Leaves with
short petioles, ovate or oval, obtuse at the apex, rounded or some
of them narrowed at the base, 1—1½ inches long, green and sparingly
scurfy, stellate above, densely silvery, stellate, scurfy beneath, some
of the scurf usually brown. Flowers small, yellowish, in short spikes
at the nodes of the twigs, expanding with or before the leaves; fruit
showy ¼ of an inch in diameter, translucent, varying in colour on
different plants from orange to brilliant crimson.
Thickets and wooded banks throughout the Rockies; flowering in May or
early June.