AIIRANTIATER (from aurantium, modern Latin for an orange), a natural order of exogenous plants, consisting of trees and shrubs, often of great beauty. Both leaves and barkare generally very smooth, and all parts are filled with little transparent recep tacles of a fragrant volatile oil, which especially abounds in the leaves and in the rind of the fruit. The leaves are alternate, and always articulated with their stalks, which are frequently winged. The flowers have a short 3 to 5 toothed, withering calyx, and 3 to 5 petals, which are broad at the base, sometimes slightly coherent, and imbricated in bud. The stamens are equal in number to the petals, or a multiple of their number; the fila ments sometimes slightly coherent in one or more bundles; the anthers terminal and erect. The stamens and petals are inserted on a disk. The ovary is free; there is one style with a thickish stigma. The fruit (a hesperidium) is pulpy, with a leathery or spongy rind, of one cell, or of a number of separable cells; the seeds attached to the axis, with thick cotyledons and no albumen, not unfrequently containing more embryos than one. —The order contains about 100 known species, natives of warm climates, and almost all of the East Indies. The species of the genus citrus (q.v.) are the best known, among which are the orange, lemon, citron, etc. But the order contains many other plants pro ducing agreeable fruits, among which the angle marmelos (see JEoLE)--called bile] or bast, in India—cookia punetata (the wampee), glycosmis citrzfolia, and triphasia trifoliata deserve particular notice. The fruits, ripe and unripe, juice and rind, the flowers, leaves,
bark, etc., of a number of species are employed medicinally. The medicinal uses of (Tie marmelos have been already noticed in the article /EGLE; those of the species of citrus will be mentioned under their proper heads. The leaves of bergera are used by the Hindoos as a stomachic and tonic, the bark and roots as nit elephantum, a large tree growing in most parts of India, yields a gum which closely resembles gum-arabic, and is used for similar purposes. The young leaves of this tree have a smell like that of anise, and are used by the native practitioners of India as a stomachic and carminative.—Skimmia (or limonia) laureola and skimmia japonica are remarkable exceptions in this order, as to the climate to which they are adapted: the former grows on the cold and lofty mountains of the n. of India, braving frost and snow; the latter, a beautiful shrub, recently introduced into Britain from Japan, is perfectly hardy even in the severest winters; its evergreen leaves and pretty little red berries remaining quite uninjured by frost, whilst its small white flowers, produced early in summer, have the fragrance of orange blossoms.