23. Celastraceae

At the beginning of this blog, I alluded to a feeling of surprised wonder at learning that two or more plants that you would never connect are actually relatives. The example I used was the Celastraceae family, which contains several wildly different species that I encountered in different ways at different times and in different places.

The first is the shrub Euonymus alatus,  familiar to me as winged euonymous, seen above in all of its "winged" glory. The plants grew all over my Dad's property and their sheer distinctiveness left a very deep impression on me as a child. You could even say that being next to one of these plants was a feeling I developed in the formative days of my youth, much of which was spent outdoors.

Flash forward about three decades to the California Central Coast, where I encountered a street tree that at first I confused with the California pepper tree (Schinus molle). It had a similar shaggy, poodle dog look, but close inspection revealed it to be the mayten tree (Maytenus boaria) from South America. The effect is similar to a weeping willow, as these specimens along Lake El Estero in Monterey illustrate.

A third member of the Celastraceae is a not a plant I have seen in person, but know of through people and films. About a decade before the mayten tree, an Ethiopian I met while working in a mail room in Oregon told me about Khat (Catha edulis), a plant that his compatriots like to chew for its pleasant effects. In his words, the drug makes people feel relaxed and outgoing. Then last year I saw the film Captain Phillips, wherein the Somali pirates are shown chomping the stuff non-stop, and it appeared to be more of a stimulant. In any case, this all seemed as far removed from the euonymus shrubs of my youth as possible, and yet they share a common heritage.

As it turns out, most of this family's 90 plus genera are native to the tropics, with Euonymus and Maytenus being among the few found in more temperate climates. Other exceptions are Canotia and Celastrus. My beloved Euonymus alatus is native to Asia, but has been popular with North American landscapers for some time. As an unintended consequence, it has spread into the wild and been declared an invasive species in some eastern states.