BURNING Suss; WAHOO (Euonymus atropurpureus, Jacci!). Shrub to 45 feet. Dainty tree with spreading, slender branches, smooth twigs. Bark ashy gray, fluted, thin, with minute scales. Wood white, tinged orange, hard, very close grained, used for knitting needles, spindles, crochet hooks, skewers and toothpicks. Leaves opposite, simple, elliptical ovate, acuminate at tip, acute at base, finely and obscurely saw-toothed, and thickened along margins, leathery, thin, smooth above, dull, downy beneath, e to 5 inches long, turn ing yellow in autumn, slow to fall. Flowers in axillary, in compound, forking cymes, inconspicuous, with 4 spreading sepals and 4 much longer purple petals, alternating with the calyx lobes, both inserted in a fleshy receptacle, or disk, and bearing the stamens and pistils on a square centre. Fruit
fleshy, 4-lobed, turning to purple as it ripens in October, inch across, parting and revealing 1 or 4 seeds in each cell, a scarlet outer coat loosely enveloping each bony seed. The persistent fruits make the tree look as if hung full of red-hot coals until midwinter. Often cultivated for winter effect in gardens. Dist.: Western New York to Nebraska, and South Dakota and Kansas; south to Florida, Arkansas, and Oklahoma; upper valley of the Missouri River, into Montana