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. |
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.
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.