by Nathaniel Lord Britton & Addison Brown, An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States… (1913)
“ Evergreen trees or shrubs, with spirally arranged short-petioled linear flat mucronate leaves, spreading so as to appear 2-ranked, and axillary and solitary, sessile or subsessile very small aments; staminate aments consisting of a few scaly bracts and 5-8 stamens, their filaments united to the middle; anthers 4-6-celled. Ovules solitary, axillary, erect, subtended by a fleshy, annular disk, which is bracted at the base. Fruit consisting of the fleshy disk which becomes cup-shaped, red, and nearly encloses the bony seed. ”
