Trees or shrubs, with entire leaves, deciduous in our species, and small greenish or yellow dioecious flowers in small umbels or almost capitate, involucrate by the bud-scales, axillary, or in the following species unfolding before the leaves at the nodes of twigs of the previous season. Calyx 6-parted, deciduous. Staminate flowers much as in Sassafras, bearing 3 series of 3 stamens, their anthers all 4-celled, 4-valved and introrse. Pistillate flowers with 9 or 12 staminodia and a globose or oval ovary. Fruit a small globose or oblong drupe. [Latin, smooth.]

About 100 species, natives of tropical and warm regions of both the Old World and the New, only the following known in North America. Type species: Glabraria tersa L.

1. Glabraria Geniculàta (Walt.) Britton. Pond Spice. Fig:. 1070

Laurus geniculata Walt. Fl. Car. 133. 1788. Tetranthera geniculata Nees, Syst. 567. 1836. Litsea geniculata Nicholson, Dict. Gard. 2: 287. 1885. Malapoenna geniculata Coulter, Mem. Torr. Club 5: 164. 1894.

A much-branched shrub, with terete smoth zigzag spreading twigs. Leaves oblong, firm, 1/2'-2' long, 1/4'-1/2' wide, acute or rounded at the apex, narrowed at the base, glabrous and rather dark green above, paler and puberulent, at least on the veins, beneath, or quite glabrous when mature; umbels 2-4-flowered, sessile; involucres of 2-4 scales; flowers yellow, less than 2" broad; drupe globose, red, about 3" in diameter.

In swamps and wet soil, southern Virginia to Florida. Pond-bush. March-April.