Division II. Dicotyledons (part 7)

A tree, with thin scaly bark, and terete branchlets covered with lenticels. Leaves petiolate, abruptly pinnate or 3 or rarely 1-foliolate, glabrous, without stipules, persistent; leaflets oblong or oblong-ovate, acute, rounded or emarginate at apex, with entire undulate margins, obscurely veined, thin, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface and slightly paler on the lower surface. Flowers regular, polygamo-diœcious, on short pedicels from the axils of minute deciduous bracts covered with thick pale tomentum, in ample terminal or axillary wide-branched panicles clothed with orange-colored pubescence; sepals 5, ovate, rounded at apex, ciliate on the margins, puberulous, persistent; petals 5, white, ovate, rounded at apex, short-unguiculate, alternate with and rather longer and narrower than the sepals; disk annular, fleshy, irregularly 5-lobed, puberulous; stamens 7 or 8, inserted on the disk, as long as the petals in the staminate flower, much shorter in the pistillate flower; filaments filiform, glabrous, anthers oblong, with a broad connective, rudimentary in the staminate flower; ovary sessile on the disk, conic, pubescent, 2-celled, contracted into a short thick style, rudimentary in the staminate flower, stigma large, declinate, obtuse; ovules 2 in each cell, suspended from the summit of the inner angle, collateral, anatropous, raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit a nearly spherical 1-seeded berry containing the rudiment of the second cell and tipped with the short remnant of the style, surrounded at base by the persistent reflexed sepals; flesh becoming thick, dark purple, and juicy at maturity. Seed short-oblong to subglobose, solitary, suspended; seed-coat thin, coriaceous, orange-brown and lustrous; embryo subglobose, filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons fleshy, plano-convex, puberulous; radicle superior, very short, uncinate, turned toward the small hilum and inclosed in a lateral cavity of the seed-coat.

The genus is represented by a single West Indian species.

The generic name is from ἐξωθέω, in allusion to its removal from a related genus.

1. Exothea paniculata Radlk. Ironwood. Ink Wood.

Leaves appearing in April, on stout grooved petioles ½′—1′ in length; leaflets 4′—5′ long and 1½′—2′ wide. Flowers opening in Florida in April, ¼′ across when expanded, the staminate and pistillate on separate plants. Fruit fully grown by the end of June and then ½′—⅝′ long, and dull orange color, remaining on the branches during the summer, ripening in the autumn; seeds ¼′—⅜′ in diameter.

A tree, sometimes 40°—50° high, with a trunk 12′—15′ in diameter, slender upright branchlets orange-brown when they first appear, becoming reddish brown in their second year and thickly covered by small white lenticels. Bark of the trunk ⅛′—¼′ thick, the bright red surface separating into large scales. Wood very hard and heavy, strong, close-grained, bright red-brown, with lighter colored sapwood of 10—12 layers of annual growth; valued for piles and also used in Florida in boat-building, for the handles of tools, and many small articles.

Distribution. Florida, Mosquito Inlet on the east coast to the shores of Bay Biscayne and on the Everglade Keys, Dade County, and on the southern keys; on the Bahamas, on many of the Antilles, and in Guatemala; on the Florida Keys generally distributed, but not common.

3. Hypelate P. Br.

A glabrous tree or shrub, with smooth bark and slender terete branchlets. Leaves long-petioled, the petioles sometimes narrow-winged, 3-foliolate, the terminal leaflet rather larger than the others, persistent; leaflets sessile, obovate, rounded or rarely acute or emarginate at apex, entire, with thickened revolute margins and a prominent midrib, coriaceous, feather-veined, the veins arcuate and connected near the margins, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, bright green on the lower surface. Flowers regular, polygamo-monœcious, minute, on slender pedicels from the axils of minute deciduous bracts, in few-flowered long-stemmed wide-branched terminal or axillary panicles; calyx 5-lobed, the lobes ovate, rounded at apex, slightly puberulous on the outer surface, ciliate on the margins, deciduous by a circumscissile line, petals 5, rather longer than the calyx-lobes, rounded, spreading, ciliate on the margins, white; stamens 7 or 8, inserted on the lobes of the annular fleshy disk; filaments filiform, as long as the petals in the staminate flower, much shorter in the pistillate flower; anthers oblong, attached on the back near the bottom, the cells spreading from above downward; ovary sessile on the disk, slightly 3-lobed, 3-celled, contracted into a short stout style, rudimentary in the staminate flower; stigma large, declinate, obscurely 3-lobed; ovules 2 in each cell, borne on the middle of its inner angle, superposed, amphitropous, the upper ascending, with the micropyle inferior, the lower pendulous, with the micropyle superior. Fruit an ovoid black drupe crowned with the remnants of the persistent style and supported on the persistent base of the disk; flesh thin and fleshy; walls of the stone thick and crustaceous. Seed solitary by the abortion of the upper ovule, suspended, obovoid; seed-coat thin, slightly wrinkled; embryo conduplicate, filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons thin, foliaceous, irregularly folded, incumbent on the long radicle.

The genus with a single species is distributed from southern Florida to the Bahamas, Cuba, Porto Rico, St. Martin, Anguilla and Jamaica.

Hypelate is the ancient name of the Butcher’s Broom.

1. Hypelate trifoliata Sw. White Ironwood.

Leaves unfolding in June and persistent until their second season or longer; petioles stout, 1½′—2′ in length, with narrow green wings; leaflets 1½′—2′ long and ¾′—1¼′ wide. Flowers appearing in Florida in June, rather less than ⅛′ in diameter, in few-flowered panicles 3′—4′ long, on a slender peduncle, the staminate and pistillate in separate panicles on the same tree. Fruit ripening in September, ⅜′ long, with a sweet rather agreeable flavor.

A tree, sometimes 35°—40° high, with a trunk occasionally 18′—20′ in diameter, and branchlets pale green when they first appear, becoming gray during their first season and bright red-brown the following year; generally much smaller. Bark of the trunk rarely ⅛′ thick, marked by shallow depressions and numerous minute lenticels. Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, rich dark brown, with thin darker colored sapwood of 4 or 5 layers of annual growth; very durable in contact with the soil and valued in Florida for posts; also used in shipbuilding and for the handles of tools.

Distribution. Southern Florida, Upper Metacombe, Umbrella and Windley’s Keys; rare.

4. Ungnadia Endl.

A tree or shrub, with thin pale gray fissured bark, slender terete slightly zigzag branchlets, without a terminal bud, marked by large conspicuous obcordate leaf-scars, small obtuse nearly globose winter-buds covered with numerous chestnut-brown imbricated scales, and thick fleshy roots. Leaves long-petioled, 5 or 7 or rarely 3-foliolate, deciduous; leaflets ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, rounded or cuneate, and often oblique at base, irregularly crenulate-serrate, coated when they first appear on the lower surface like the petiole with dense pale tomentum, and pilose above, glabrous at maturity with the exception of a few hairs on the lower surface along the principal veins, pinnately veined, reticulate-venulose, the terminal leaflet long-petiolulate, the others short-petiolulate to subsessile. Flowers irregular, polygamous, in small pubescent fascicles or corymbs appearing just before or with the leaves from the axils of those of the previous year, usually from separate buds, or occasionally from the base of leafy branches; calyx 5-lobed, hypogynous, the lobes oblong-lanceolate, somewhat united irregularly at base only, deciduous; petals 4 by the suppression of the anterior one, or 5 and then alternate with the lobes of the calyx, hypogynous on the margin of a thickened truncate torus, unguiculate, bright rose color, deciduous, the claw as long as the lobes of the calyx, nearly erect, clothed with tomentum, especially on the inner surface, conspicuously appendaged at the summit with a fimbricated crest of short fleshy tufted hairs, the blade obovate, spreading, often erose-crenulate; disk unilateral, oblique, tongue-shaped, surrounding and connate with the base of the stipe of the ovary; stamens 7—10, usually 8 or 9, inserted on the oblique edge of the disk, much exserted and unequal, the anterior ones shorter than the others, equal or almost so and shorter than the petals in the pistillate flower; filaments filiform; anthers oblong, attached near the base; ovary ovoid, 3-celled, pilose, raised on a long stipe, rudimentary in the staminate flower; style subulate, filiform, elongated, slightly curved upward; stigma minute, terminal; ovules 2, borne on the inner angle of the cell near its middle, ascending, the micropyle inferior. Fruit a coriaceous 3-celled loculicidally 3-valved broad-ovoid capsule, conspicuously stipitate, crowned with the remnants of the style, rugosely roughened and dark reddish brown, loculicidally 3-valved, the valves somewhat cordate, bearing the dissepiment on the middle. Seed generally solitary by abortion, almost globose; seed-coat coriaceous, very smooth and shining, dark chestnut-brown or almost black; hilum broad; tegmen thin; embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons thick and fleshy, nearly hemispheric, conferruminate, incumbent on the short conic descending radicle turned toward the hilum, remaining below ground in germination.

Ungnadia with a single species is confined to Texas, New Mexico, and northern Mexico.

The name is in honor of Baron Ferdinand von Ungnad, Ambassador of the Emperor Rudolph II. at the Ottoman Porte who sent seeds of the Horsechestnut-tree from Constantinople to Vienna in the middle of the sixteenth century.

1. Ungnadia speciosa Endl. Spanish Buckeye.

Leaves appearing from March to April with or just after the flowers, 6′—12′ long, with a petiole 2′—6′ in length, rather coriaceous leaflets, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface and pale and rugose on the lower surface, 3′—5′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, the terminal leaflet on a petiolule ¼′—1′ in length. Flowers 1′ across when expanded, in crowded clusters 1½′—2′ long. Fruit 2′ broad, opening in October, the empty pods often remaining on the branches until the appearance of the flowers the following year; seeds ½′—⅝′ in diameter.

A tree, occasionally 25°—30° high, with a trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, dividing at some distance from the ground into a number of small upright branches, and branchlets light orange-brown and covered during their first season with short fine pubescence, and pale brown tinged with red, glabrous and marked by scattered lenticels in their second year; more often a shrub, with numerous stems. Winter-buds about ⅛′ in diameter. Bark of the trunk rarely more than ¼′ thick, light gray and broken by numerous shallow reticulated fissures. Wood heavy, close-grained, rather soft and brittle, red tinged with brown, with lighter colored sapwood. The sweet seeds possess powerful emetic properties and are reputed to be poisonous.

Distribution. Borders of streams, river-bottoms and limestone hills, and westward on the sides of mountain cañons; valley of the Trinity River, Dallas County and of the lower Brazos River, Texas, to the mountains of southeastern New Mexico, and southward into Mexico; most common and of its largest size forty to fifty miles from the Texas coast west of the Colorado River.

Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental plant in the southern United States.

XXXVIII. Rhamnaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with scaly or naked buds, watery bitter astringent juice, simple leaves, and minute deciduous stipules (persistent in Krugiodendron). Flowers small, mostly greenish, perfect (polygamo-diœcious in one species of Rhamnus); calyx 4—5-lobed, the lobes valvate in the bud; petals 4—5, inserted on the calyx near the margin of the conspicuous disk lining the short calyx-tube, and infolding the stamens, or 0; stamens as many as and alternate with the calyx-lobes, free, inserted at or below the margins of the disk; filaments slender, subulate; anthers introrse, versatile, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; pistils of 2—3 united carpels; ovary 2—3-, or rarely 1-celled by abortion, partly immersed in the disk; style terminal; stigma 2—4-lobed; ovules 1 in each cell, erect, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle inferior. Fruit drupaceous, supported on the tube of the calyx and bearing the remnants of the style. Seed usually with scanty oily albumen; embryo with broad cotyledons; radicle inferior, next the hilum.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Genera of the United States.

Fruit more or less fleshy.

Fruit with a single stone; petals 0.

Sepals without crests.

Leaves alternate; branches spinescent.

1. Condalia.

Leaves nearly opposite; branches not spinescent.

2. Reynosia.

Sepals crested; leaves mostly opposite.

3. Krugiodendron.

Fruit with 2 or 3 nutlets; petals 4 or 5, or 0; leaves alternate.

4. Rhamnus.

Fruit crustaceous, 3-lobed, separating into 3 longitudinally 2-valved nutlets.

Sepals inflexed; petals narrowed into a long slender claw.

5. Ceanothus.

Sepals spreading; petals sessile.

6. Colubrina.

1. Condalia Cav.

Trees or shrubs, with rigid spinescent branches and minute scaly buds. Leaves alternate, subsessile, obovate or oblong, entire, feather-veined. Flowers axillary, solitary or fascicled, greenish white, on short pedicels; calyx with a short broad-obconic tube and a 5-lobed limb, the lobes ovate, acute, membranaceous, spreading and persistent; disk fleshy, flat, slightly 5-angled, surrounding the free base of the ovary; petals 0; stamens 5, inserted on the free margin of the disk between the lobes of the calyx; filaments incurved, shorter than the calyx-lobes; ovary 1-celled, conic, gradually narrowed into a short thick style; stigma 3-lobed; ovule ascending from the base of the cell. Fruit ovoid or subglobose; flesh thin; stone thick-walled, crustaceous. Seed compressed; seed-coat thin and smooth; cotyledons oval, flat.

Condalia with nine or ten species is confined to the New World and is distributed from western Texas and southern California to Brazil and Argentina. Of the six species found within the territory of the United States one is a small tree.

The generic name commemorates that of Antonio Condal, a Spanish physician of the eighteenth century sent to South America on a scientific mission in 1754.

1. Condalia obovata Hook. Purple Haw. Log Wood.

Leaves often fascicled on short spinescent lateral branchlets, spatulate to oblong-cuneate, mucronate, when they first appear pubescent, especially on the lower surface, at maturity glabrous, rather thin, pale yellow-green, 1′—1½′ long, and about ⅓′ wide, with a conspicuous midrib and usually 3 pairs of prominent primary veins; unfolding in May and June and falling irregularly during the winter. Flowers in 2—4-flowered short-stemmed fascicles, on branchlets of the year. Fruit ripening irregularly during the summer, ¼′ long, dark blue or black, with a sweet pleasant flavor.

A tree, sometimes 30° high, with a trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, erect rigid zigzag branchlets terminating in a stout spine and covered at first with soft velvety pubescence, becoming glabrous before the end of their first season, pale red-brown and often covered with thin scales; more often a shrub. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, divided into flat shallow ridges, the dark brown surface tinged with red separating into thin scales. Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, light red, with light yellow sapwood of 7—8 layers of annual growth; burning with an intense heat and valued as fuel.

Distribution. Southwestern Texas from Jackson County (Vanderbilt) and Corpus Christi, Nueces County, to the Rio Grande and to Comal and Valverde Counties; in northeastern Mexico; of tree-like habit and of its largest size on the high sandy banks of the lower Rio Grande and its tributaries; often covering large areas with dense impenetrable chaparral.

2. Reynosia Griseb.

Trees or shrubs, with rigid unarmed terete branches, and scaly buds. Leaves mostly opposite, entire, coriaceous, short-petiolate, reticulate-veined, persistent. Flowers minute, on stout pedicels bibracteolate near the base and two or three times longer than the flower, in small axillary sessile umbels; calyx persistent, 5-lobed, the lobes deltoid or ovate, acute or acuminate, spreading, petaloid, deciduous; disk fleshy; petals 0; stamens 5, inserted on the margin of the disk, rather shorter than the calyx-lobes; filaments incurved; anthers oval; ovary free from the disk, almost superior, conic, 2—3-celled, contracted into a short erect thick style; stigma 2—3-lobed. Fruit drupaceous; flesh thin; stone crustaceo-membranaceous. Seed ovoid or subglobose; seed-coat very thin, conspicuously rugose and tuberculate; embryo axile in copious subcorneous ruminate albumen; cotyledons oblong.

Reynosia is distributed from southern Florida and the Bahama Islands to the Antilles. Four species are recognized; of these, one, a small tree, extends into southern Florida.

The generic name is in honor of Alvaro Reynoso (1830—1888), the distinguished Cuban chemist and writer on agriculture and scientific subjects.

1. Reynosia septentrionalis Urb. Red Ironwood. Darling Plum.

Leaves oblong to ovate or obovate, or sometimes nearly orbicular, rounded, truncate or frequently emarginate and usually minutely apiculate at apex, gradually narrowed at base into a short broad petiole, very thick and coriaceous, dark green on the upper, rather paler or often rufous on the lower surface, 1′—1½′ long and ½′ broad, with thickened revolute margins, a stout broad midrib, about five pairs of primary veins spreading nearly at right angles, and numerous reticulate veinlets; unfolding in April and remaining on the branches for one and sometimes for two years. Flowers yellowish green appearing in May, /12′ long; sepals ovate, acute. Fruit ripening in Florida in November or frequently not until the following spring, short-obovoid, ½′ long, purple or nearly black, edible, with an agreeable flavor.

A tree, 20°—25° high, with a trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, stout terete rigid branchlets slightly puberulous when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous and gray faintly tinged with red, growing darker in their second season, then often covered by small tubercles and marked by the prominent elevated leaf-scars. Winter-buds minute, chestnut-brown. Bark of the trunk /16′—⅛′ thick, dark-red-brown, and divided into large plate-like scales. Wood heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, rich dark brown, with light brown sapwood of 15—20 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Florida, coast and islands from the Marquesas group to the shores of Bay Biscayne and the Everglade Keys, Dade County; common and generally distributed; on the Bahama Islands.

3. Krugiodendron Urb.

A small tree or shrub, with slender unarmed terete branches roughened by numerous small lenticels, and minute scaly buds. Leaves opposite or obliquely opposite, or sometimes alternate on lower branches, ovate or oval, often emarginate, coriaceous, entire, short-petiolate, feather-veined, persistent; stipules acuminate, persistent. Flowers greenish yellow, on short slender pedicels, in axillary simple or dichotomously branched cymes; calyx broad-obconic, 5-lobed, the lobes triangular, acute, erect or spreading, conspicuously crested on the inner surface, deciduous; disk annular, broad, fleshy, 5-lobed, surrounding the base of the ovary; petals 0; stamens 5, inserted under the margin of the disk; anthers ovoid or ovoid-orbicular, obtuse; ovary conic, imperfectly 2-celled; styles short and thick, united nearly to the apex, the branches spreading and stigmatic on the inner face; ovule ascending from the base of the cell. Fruit 1-seeded, oval or ovoid; flesh thin and black; wall of the stone thin and bony. Seed ellipsoid, compressed, without albumen; seed-coat membranaceous; embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons thick and fleshy, obovate or elliptic.

Krugiodendron, with a single species, is confined to southern Florida and the West Indies.

The generic name is in honor of Leopold Krug (1833—1898), a student of the flora of the Antilles.

1. Krugiodendron ferreum Urb. Black Ironwood.

Leaves bright green and lustrous above, pale yellow-green below, glabrous with the exception of a few scattered hairs on the upper surface and on the petiole, 1′—1½′ long and ¾′—1′ wide, with entire or slightly undulate margins; persistent for two or three years; petioles stout, ¼′ in length. Flowers on bibracteolate pedicels ¼′ long, in 3—5-flowered cymes on peduncles sometimes ½′ in length, usually much shorter and often branched near the apex, on branchlets of the year; calyx about /16′ long. Fruit generally solitary, ⅓′ in length, on a stem ⅓′—½′ long.

A tree, sometimes 30° high, with a trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, and slender branchlets at first green and covered with dense velvety pubescence, becoming glabrous in their second year, and then gray faintly tinged with red and roughened by small crowded lenticels; generally much smaller and more often shrubby than arborescent. Bark of the trunk about ¼′ thick and divided into prominent rounded longitudinal ridges broken on the surface into short thick light gray scales. Wood exceedingly heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, brittle, rich orange-brown, with thin lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, Cape Canaveral on the east coast to the shores of Bay Biscayne and on the Everglade Keys, Dade County, near Cape Sable, and on the southern keys; one of the commonest of the small trees of the region; on the Bahama Islands and on several of the Antilles.

4. Rhamnus L.

Trees or shrubs, with terete often spinescent branches, without a terminal bud, scaly or naked axillary buds and acrid bitter bark. Leaves alternate or rarely obliquely opposite, conduplicate in the bud, petiolate, feather-veined, entire or dentate, stipulate. Flowers perfect or polygamo-diœcious, in axillary simple or compound racemes or fascicled cymes; calyx campanulate, 4—5-lobed, the lobes triangular-ovate, erect or spreading, keeled on the inner surface, deciduous; disk thin below, more or less thickened above; petals 5, inserted on the margin of the disk, ovate, unguiculate, emarginate, infolded round the stamens, deciduous, or 0; stamens 4 or 5; filaments very short; anthers oblong-ovoid or sagittate, rudimentary and sterile in the pistillate flower; ovary free, ovoid, included in the tube of the calyx, 2—4-celled, rudimentary in the staminate flower; styles united below, with spreading stigmatic lobes or terminating in a 2—3-lobed obtuse stigma; ovule erect from the base of the cell. Fruit drupaceous, oblong or spherical; flesh thick and succulent, inclosing 2—4 separable cartilaginous 1-seeded nutlets. Seeds erect, obovoid, grooved longitudinally on the back, with a cartilaginous seed-coat, the raphe in the groove, or convex on the back, with a membranaceous seed-coat, the raphe lateral next to one margin of the cotyledons; embryo large, surrounded by thin fleshy albumen; cotyledons oval, foliaceous, with revolute margins, or flat and fleshy.

Rhamnus with about sixty species is widely distributed in nearly all the temperate and in many of the tropical parts of the world with the exception of Australasia and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Of the five species indigenous to the United States three attain the size of small trees. The fruit and bark of Rhamnus are drastic, and yield yellow and green dyes. The European Rhamnus cathartica L., the Buckthorn, has long been used as a hedge plant in northern Europe, and in eastern North America, where it has now become sparingly naturalized.

The generic name is from ῥάμνος, the classical name of the Buckthorn.

Conspectus of the North American Arborescent Species.

Flowers polygamo-diœcious, in sessile umbels; calyx 4-lobed; petals 0; anthers oblong-ovoid; lobes of the stigma elongated, spreading; fruit red; seed grooved on the back; seed-coat cartilaginous; leaves often sharply toothed, persistent; winter-buds scaly.

1. R. crocea (G).

Flowers perfect, in pedunculate umbels; calyx 5-lobed; petals 5; anthers sagittate; lobes of the stigma short and obtuse; fruit black; seed rounded on the back; seed-coat membranaceous; leaves deciduous; winter-buds naked.

Peduncles shorter than the petioles.

2. R. caroliniana (C).

Peduncles longer than the petioles.

3. R. Purshiana (B, G).

1. Rhamnus crocea Nutt.

Leaves persistent, often in fascicles, elliptic, broad-ovate to suborbicular, rounded and often apiculate at apex, glandular-denticulate with minute teeth, coriaceous, yellow-green and lustrous on the upper surface, pale and frequently bronzed or copper color on the lower surface, glabrous or often puberulous while young, with a prominent midrib and slender primary veins, ¼′—¾′ long; petioles short and stout; stipules minute, acuminate. Flowers polygamo-diœcious, on slender often puberulous pedicels, in small clusters from the axils of the leaves or of small lanceolate persistent bracts on shoots of the year; calyx 4-lobed, with acuminate lobes, about ⅛′ long; petals 0; stamens rather shorter than the calyx, with short stout incurved filaments and large ovoid anthers, minute and rudimentary in the pistillate flower; ovary ovoid, contracted into a long slender style divided above the middle into two wide-spreading acuminate stigmatic lobes, rudimentary in the staminate flower. Fruit red, obovoid, slightly grooved or lobed at maturity, ¼′ long, with thin dry flesh and 1—3 nutlets; seed broad-ovoid, pointed at apex, deeply grooved on the back and ⅛′ long, with a thin membranaceous pale chestnut-colored coat.

A shrub, 6′—3° high, with slender rigid often spinescent branchlets forming thickets.

Distribution. Coast mountains of central and southern California. Passing into

Rhamnus crocea var. ilicifolia Greene.

Leaves oval or orbicular, spinulose-dentate, often golden beneath and 1′—1½′ long and ¾′—1′ wide. Flowers with 4 or occasionally 5 calyx-lobes and stamens.

A tree, occasionally 25° high, with a trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, stout spreading branches, and slender branchlets yellow-green and puberulous or glabrate when they first appear, becoming dark red or reddish brown and glabrous in their second season. Winter-buds obtuse, barely more than /16′ long, with small puberulous apiculate imbricated scales ciliate on the margins. Bark of the trunk usually from /16′—⅛′ thick, the dark gray surface slightly roughened by minute tubercles.

Distribution. California, valley of the Sacramento River southward along the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, and on the coast ranges and southern mountains to San Diego County; Arizona, Oak Creek and Sycamore Cañons, near Flagstaff, Coconino County, (P. Lowell), Copper Cañon, west of Camp Verde, Yavapai County, and on the Pinal and Santa Catalina Mountains.

Passing into

Rhamnus crocea var. insularis Sarg.

A form with larger less prominently toothed leaves sometimes 3′ long and 1½′ wide, rather larger flowers, with shorter and broader calyx-lobes a less deeply divided style, and larger fruits. A tree often growing to the height of 25°—30°, flowering later than the var. ilicifolia, and not uncommon on the islands of the Santa Barbara group and on the mountains of the adjacent mainland. A form (f. pilosa Trel.) with narrow revolute leaves densely pilose throughout, occurs in the Santa Maria valley of the mountains near San Diego.

2. Rhamnus caroliniana Walt. Indian Cherry.

Leaves deciduous, elliptic-oblong or broad-elliptic, acute or acuminate, cuneate or somewhat rounded at base, remotely and obscurely serrate, or crenulate, densely coated when they unfold with rusty brown tomentum, and at maturity thin, dark yellow-green above, paler below, glabrous or somewhat hairy on the lower surface, 2′—6′ long and 1′ to nearly 2′ wide, with a prominent yellow midrib and about 6 pairs of conspicuous yellow primary veins; turning yellow in the autumn before falling; petioles slender, pubescent, ½′ to nearly 1′ in length; stipules nearly triangular. Flowers appearing from April to June when the leaves are almost fully grown, on slender pedicels about ¼′ long, in few-flowered pubescent umbels, on peduncles varying from ⅛′—½′ in length; calyx 5-lobed, with a narrow turbinate tube and triangular lobes; petals 5, broad-ovate, deeply notched at apex and folded round the short stamens; ovary contracted into a long columnar style terminating in a slightly 3-lobed stigma. Fruit ripening in September and sometimes remaining on the branches until the beginning of winter, globose, ⅓′ in diameter, black, with thin sweet rather dry flesh and 2—4 nutlets; seeds obtuse at apex, rounded on the back, reddish brown, about ⅕′ long.

A tree, 30°—40° high, with a trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, small spreading unarmed branches, and slender branchlets light red-brown and puberulent or covered with a glaucous bloom when they first appear, becoming slightly angled, gray, and glabrous, and marked during their second season by the small horizontal oval leaf-scars; more often a tall shrub, with numerous stems 15°—20° high. Winter-buds naked, hoary-tomentose. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, slightly furrowed, ashy gray and often marked by large black blotches. Wood rather hard, light, close-grained, not strong, light brown, with lighter colored sapwood of 5 or 6 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Borders of streams on rich bottom-lands, and on limestone ridges; Virginia to western Florida and westward through the valley of the Ohio River to southern Iowa and southeastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, the valley of the Washita River, Oklahoma (Ardman County), and to Kendall, Kerr and Uvalde Counties, western Texas; occasionally tree-like in western Florida and Mississippi, and of its largest size only in southern Arkansas and the adjacent portions of Texas; very abundant on the limestone barrens of central Kentucky and Tennessee.

3. Rhamnus Purshiana DC. Bearberry. Coffee-tree.

Leaves deciduous, broad-elliptic, obtuse or bluntly pointed at apex, rounded or slightly cordate at base, finely serrate, or often nearly entire, with undulate margins, thin, villose with short hairs on the lower surface and on the veins above, 1½′—7′ long, 1½′—2′ wide, conspicuously netted-veined, with a broad and prominent midrib and primary veins; turning pale yellow late in the autumn before falling; petioles stout, often pubescent, ½′—1′ in length; stipules membranaceous, acuminate. Flowers on slender pubescent pedicels ¼′—1′ long, in axillary cymes on slender pubescent peduncles ½′—1′ in length on shoots of the year; calyx nearly campanulate, with 5 spreading acuminate lobes; petals 5, minute, ovate, deeply notched at apex, and folded round the short stamens; stigma 2 or 3-lobed. Fruit globose or broad-obovoid, black, ⅓′—½′ in diameter, slightly or not at all lobed, with thin rather juicy flesh, and 2 or 3 obovoid nutlets usually ⅓′ long, rounded on the back, flattened on the inner surface, with 2 bony tooth-like enlargements at base, 1 on each side of the large scar of the hilum, and a thin gray or pale yellow-green shell; seeds obtuse at apex, rounded on the back, seed-coat thin and papery, yellow-brown on the outer surface, bright orange color on the inner surface like the cotyledons.

A tree, 35°—40° high, with a slender trunk often 18′—20′ in diameter, separating 10°—15° from the ground into numerous stout upright or sometimes nearly horizontal branches, and slender branchlets coated at first with fine soft pubescence, pale yellow-green or reddish brown, and pubescent, glabrous, or covered with scattered hairs in their second season and then marked by the elevated oval horizontal leaf-scars; often shrubby and occasionally prostrate. Winter-buds naked, hoary-tomentose. Bark of the trunk rarely more than ¼′ thick, dark brown to light brown or gray tinged with red, broken on the surface into short thin scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, brown tinged with red, with thin lighter colored sapwood. The bark possesses the drastic properties peculiar to that of other species of the genus, and is a popular domestic remedy in Oregon and California, and under the name of Cascara Sagrada has been admitted into the American materia medica.

Distribution. Rich bottom-lands and the sides of cañons, usually in coniferous forests; shores of Puget Sound eastward along the mountain ranges of northern Washington to the Bitter Root Mountains of Idaho and the shores of Flat Head Lake, Montana, and southward to central California; Arizona, southern slope of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado River, Coconino County (A. Rehder), Cave Creek Cañon, Chiricahua Mountains, Cochise County (J. W. Toumey).

Occasionally cultivated in the gardens of western Europe and of the eastern United States.

5. Ceanothus L.

Small trees or shrubs, with slender terete branches, without a terminal bud, and small scaly axillary buds. Leaves petiolate, 3-ribbed from the base, or pinnately veined, persistent in the arborescent species. Flowers on colored pedicels, in umbellate fascicles collected in dense or prolonged terminal or axillary thyrsoid cymes or panicles, blue or white; calyx colored, with a turbinate or hemispheric tube and 5 triangular membranaceous petaloid lobes; disk fleshy, thickened above; petals 5, inserted under the margin of the disk, unguiculate, wide-spreading, deciduous, the long claw infolded round the stamens; stamens 5, inserted with and opposite the petals, persistent, filaments spreading; ovary partly immersed in and more or less adnate to the disk, 3-celled, sometimes 3-angled, the angles often surmounted by a fleshy gland persistent on the fruit; styles short, united below; stigmas 3-lobed with spreading lobes; ovule erect from the base of the cell. Fruit 3-lobed, subglobose, with a thin outer coat, soon becoming dry, and separating into 3 crustaceous or cartilaginous longitudinally 2-valved nutlets. Seeds erect, obovoid, lenticellate, with a broad basal excrescence surrounding the hilum; seed-coat thin, crustaceous; albumen fleshy; embryo axile; cotyledons oval or obovate.

Ceanothus is confined to the temperate and warmer regions of North America, with about thirty species, mostly belonging to California. The leaves, bark, and roots are astringent and tonic. Of the species of the United States three are small trees.

The generic name is from κεάνωθος, the classical name of some spiny plant.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Species of the United States.

Branchlets not spinose, leaves 3-ribbed.

Leaves broad-ovate to elliptic, subcordate or rounded at base, pale and tomentose below.

1. C. arboreus (G).

Leaves elliptic, acute at base, glabrous except on the veins below.

2. C. thyrsiflorus (G).

Branchlets spinose; leaves with a single midrib, mostly elliptic, rounded or subcordate at base, glabrous.

3. C. spinosus (G).

1. Ceanothus arboreus Greene.

Leaves broad-ovate or elliptic, acute, conspicuously glandular-crenate, dark green and softly puberulent on the upper surface, pale and densely tomentose on the lower surface, 2½′—4′ long and 1′—2½′ wide, with prominent veins; petioles stout, pubescent, ½′—1′ in length; stipules subulate from a broad triangular base, ¼′ long. Flowers pale blue opening in July and August, on slender hairy pedicels ½′—1′ long, from the axils of large scarious caducous bracts, in ample compound densely hoary-pubescent thyrsoid clusters 3′—4′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, on a leafy or naked axillary peduncle at the end of young branches. Fruit black, ¼′ across.

A round-headed tree, 20°—25° high, with a straight trunk 6′—10′ in diameter, dividing 4°—5° from the ground into many stout spreading branches, and slender slightly angled pale brown branchlets covered with short dense tomentum, becoming in their second season terete, nearly glabrous, roughened with scattered lenticels and marked by large elevated leaf-scars; often a shrub. Bark of the trunk dark brown, about ⅛′ thick, and broken into small square plates separating into thick scales.

Distribution. Santa Catalina, Santa Cruz, and Santa Rosa Islands of the Santa Barbara group off the coast of southern California; most abundant and of its largest size on the northern slopes of Santa Cruz; on the other islands usually shrubby, with numerous slender stems.

2. Ceanothus thyrsiflorus Eschs. Blue Myrtle. California Lilac.

Leaves oblong or oblong-ovate, minutely glandular-serrate, smooth and lustrous on the upper surface and paler and slightly pubescent on the lower surface, especially along the 3 prominent ribs, 1′—1½′ long and ½′—1′ wide; petioles stout, ⅓′—½′ in length; stipules membranaceous, acute. Flowers blue or white, appearing in early spring in small pedunculate corymbs from the axils of minute deciduous bracts, and collected into slender rather loose thyrsoid clusters 2′—3′ long in the axils of upper leaves or of small scarious bracts, and usually surmounted by the terminal leafy shoot of the branch. Fruit ripening from July to December, black; seeds /12′ long, smooth, dark brown or nearly black.

A tree, occasionally 35° high, with a trunk 12′—14′ in diameter, dividing 5°—6° from the ground into many small wide-spreading branches, and conspicuously angled pale yellow-green branchlets slightly pubescent when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous; more often a tall or low shrub. Bark of the trunk thin, with a bright red-brown surface separating into thin narrow appressed scales. Wood close-grained, rather soft, light brown, with thin darker colored sapwood.

Distribution. Shady hillsides on the borders of the forest and often in the neighborhood of streams; coast mountains of California from Mendocino County to the valley of the San Luis Rey River, San Diego County; of its largest size northward, and in the Redwood-forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains; southward often a low shrub, frequently flowering on the wind-swept shores of the ocean when only 1°—2° high.

3. Ceanothus spinosus Nutt. Lilac.

Leaves elliptic to oblong, full and rounded, apiculate or often slightly emarginate or gradually narrowed and pointed or rarely 3-lobed at apex, and rounded or cuneate at base, when they unfold villose-pubescent below along the stout midrib and obscure primary veins, soon glabrous, coriaceous, usually about 1′ long and ½′ wide; petioles stout, ⅙′—⅓′ in length, at first villose, becoming nearly glabrous; leaves on vigorous shoots sometimes ovate, conspicuously 3-nerved, irregularly serrate with incurved apiculate teeth, or coarsely dentate, and often 1½′ long and ⅝′ wide; stipules minute, acute. Flowers light or dark blue, very fragrant, opening from March until May, in lax corymbs from the axils of acute pubescent red caducous bracts on upper leafy branchlets of the year, the whole inflorescence forming an open thyrsus often 5′—6′ long and 3′—4′ thick, leafless toward the apex. Fruit depressed, obscurely lobed, crestless, black, ¼′—⅓′ in diameter.

A tree, 18°—20° high, with a trunk 5′—6′ in diameter, upright branches forming a narrow open head, and slender divaricate angled branchlets pubescent or puberulous when they first appear, soon glabrous, bright green, ultimately reddish brown, frequently terminating in sharp leafless thorn-like points; more often shrubby. Bark of the trunk thin, red-brown, roughened by small closely appressed scales.

Distribution. California, common in mountain cañons near the coast of Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles Counties; often forming a dense undergrowth in the forest, which it enlivens for many weeks in early spring by its large clusters of bright blue flowers.

6. Colubrina Brong.

Trees or shrubs, with terete branches and scaly buds. Leaves alternate, petiolate, pinnately veined or triple-veined from the base, often ferrugineo-tomentose on the lower surface, persistent. Flowers axillary, in contracted few-flowered cymes or fascicles, yellow or greenish yellow; calyx-tube hemispheric, persistent, 5-lobed, the lobes spreading, triangular-ovate, keeled on the inner surface, deciduous by a circumscissile line; disk fleshy, annular, 5-angled or indistinctly 5 or 10-lobed; petals 5 yellow or white, inserted under the margin of the disk, shorter than the lobes of the calyx, cucullate, unguiculate, infolding the stamens; stamens 5, opposite to and inserted with the petals; filaments incurved; anthers ovoid; ovary surrounded by and confluent with the disk, 3-celled, subglobose, contracted into a slender 3-lobed style, the obtuse lobes stigmatic on the inner face; ovule erect, from the base of the cell. Fruit subglobose, 3-lobed, the outer coat thin and septicidally dehiscent into 3 1-seeded crustaceous nutlets 2-valved at apex. Seeds erect, broad-obovoid, compressed, 3-angled; seed-coat coriaceous, smooth and shining; embryo axile in thick fleshy albumen; cotyledons orbicular, flat or incurved, thin or fleshy.

Colubrina with about a dozen species is confined to the tropics, with the largest number of species in the New World. Of the four species found within the territory of the United States three are arborescent.

The generic name is from coluber, a serpent, probably on account of the peculiar twisting of the deep furrows on the stems of some of the species.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Species of the United States.

Leaves thin, elliptic, ovate or lanceolate, glabrous at maturity.

1. C. reclinata (D).

Leaves thick or coriaceous.

Leaves oblong to elliptic, rounded or acute at apex, densely soft-pubescent.

2. C. cubensis (D).

Leaves elliptic to ovate-lanceolate, bluntly pointed at apex, coriaceous, rusty-pubescent beneath.

3. C. arborescens (D).

1. Colubrina reclinata Brong. Naked Wood.

Leaves elliptic, ovate or lanceolate, usually contracted at apex into a blunt point, cuneate or somewhat rounded and furnished with 2 conspicuous marginal glands at base, and entire when they unfold in early summer thin, glabrous or finely puberulent below and along the principal veins, and at maturity thin, yellow-green, 2½′—3′ long and 1½′ to nearly 2′ wide, with a stout midrib and arcuate primary veins; persistent until their second year; petioles slender, ½′ in length. Flowers in cymes rather shorter than the petioles, on shoots of the year, pubescent, soon becoming glabrate. Fruit ¼′ in diameter and dark orange-red, ripening late in the autumn, on pedicels ½′ in length; seeds light red-brown, ⅛′ long.

A tree, 50°—60° high, with a trunk 3°—4° in diameter, divided by numerous irregular deep furrows multiplying and spreading in all directions, and branchlets slightly angled when they first appear, puberulent and reddish brown, soon becoming glabrate, and in their second season nearly terete, gray or light brown, and marked by numerous small light-colored lenticels. Bark of the trunk thin, orange-brown, exfoliating in large papery scales. Wood heavy, hard, very strong, dark brown tinged with yellow, with thin light yellow sapwood of 8—10 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Florida, on Umbrella Key, the north end of Key Largo, and on some of the small keys south of Elliott’s Key; of its largest size and forming a forest of considerable extent on Umbrella Key; on the Bahama Islands and on many of the Antilles.

2. Colubrina cubensis Brong.

Leaves oblong to elliptic, gradually narrowed and rounded or acute and apiculate at apex, rounded or cuneate at the often unsymmetric base, slightly crenulate-serrate with broad rounded teeth, thick, dull dark green and soft-pubescent on the upper surface, pale and pubescent on the lower surface, 3½′—5′ long and 1¼′—1½′ wide, with a prominent pubescent yellow midrib and slender primary veins; petioles slender, yellow, densely pubescent, ⅓′—½′ in length; stipules linear-lanceolate, long-acuminate, pubescent, ⅓′ in length. Flowers minute on pedicels ⅙′ long, from the axils of ovate acuminate villose caducous bracts, in villose cymes on peduncles longer than the petioles; calyx densely pubescent, the lobes triangular, ovate, acute, about as long as the yellow petals. Fruit globose, about ⅓′ in diameter.

A tree in Florida from 20°—30° high, with a trunk 6′—8′ in diameter (teste J. K. Small) and slender light red-brown pubescent branchlets.

Distribution. Florida, hummocks of the Everglade Keys, Dade County; on the Bahama Islands and in Cuba and Hispaniola.

3. Colubrina arborescens Sarg.

Colubrina Colubrina Mills.

Leaves coriaceous, persistent, elliptic to ovate-lanceolate, gradually narrowed and bluntly pointed at apex, narrowed and rounded or cuneate at base, entire, dark green, glabrous and lustrous on the upper surface, pale and coated on the lower surface with thick rusty pubescence and sometimes marked by conspicuous glands mostly at the end of small veins, 2′—4½′ long and 1¼′—2½′ wide, with a thick midrib; petioles stout, rusty-pubescent, ½′—¾′ in length; stipules oblong, acuminate, rusty-pubescent, caducous. Flowers minute, in axillary cymes shorter than the petioles, covered with persistent rusty pubescence and generally produced on short axillary branches; petals white or nearly white. Fruit on a stout rusty-pubescent pedicel, about ½′ long, on a much thickened peduncle, obovoid to subglobose, dark purple or nearly black, /12′ in diameter; nutlets light yellow; seed about ⅙′ long.

A tree, sometimes 25° high, with a straight trunk 8′—12′ in diameter, large erect branches and stout branchlets densely rusty-pubescent when they first appear, and light gray, puberulous and marked by small dark lenticels in their second year; in Florida more often a shrub.

Distribution. Florida, on the Everglade and southern keys; on the Bahama Islands and on several of the Antilles.

XXXIX. Tiliaceæ.

Trees, shrubs, or herbs, with alternate simple leaves, and free stipules. Flowers regular, perfect; sepals valvate in the bud, deciduous; corolla hypogynous; stamens numerous, with 2-celled anthers, the cells opening longitudinally; pistil compound; styles united into 1; stigma capitate. Fruit capsular or nut-like. Seeds with albumen; embryo with broad foliaceous cotyledons.

The Linden family with forty-four genera is chiefly tropical, with more representatives in the southern than in the northern hemisphere. Of the three North American genera only Tilia is arborescent.

1. Tilia L. Bass Wood. Linden.

Trees, with terete moderately stout branchlets, without a terminal bud, large compressed acute axillary buds, with numerous imbricated scales, those of the inner rank accrescent, mucilaginous juice, and tough fibrous inner bark. Leaves conduplicate in the bud, long-petiolate, 2-ranked, cordate or truncate at the oblique base, acute or acuminate, serrate, deciduous, their petioles in falling leaving large elevated horizontal leaf-scars displaying the ends of numerous fibro-vascular bundles; stipules ligulate, membranaceous, caducous. Flowers nectariferous, fragrant, on slender clavate pedicels, in axillary or terminal cymes, with minute caducous bracts at the base of the branches, their peduncle more or less connate with the axis of a large membranaceous light green ligulate often obovate persistent conspicuously reticulate-veined bract; sepals 5, distinct; petals 5, imbricated in the bud, alternate with the sepals, sometimes thickened and glandular at the narrow base, creamy white or yellow, deciduous; stamens inserted on a short hypogynous receptacle; filaments filiform, forked near the apex, collected into 5 clusters and united at base with each other and (in the American species) with a spatulate petaloid scale (staminodium) placed opposite each petal, the branches of the filament bearing oblong extrorse half anthers; ovary sessile, tomentose, 5-celled, the cells opposite the sepals; style erect, dilated at apex into 5 spreading stigmatic lobes; ovules 2 in each cell, ascending from the middle of its inner angle, semianatropous, the micropyle centripetal-inferior. Fruit nut-like, woody, subglobose to short-oblong or ovoid, sometimes ribbed, tomentose, 1-celled by the obliteration of the partitions, 1 or 2-seeded. Seeds obovoid, amphitropous, ascending; seed-coat cartilaginous, light reddish brown; embryo large, often curved, in fleshy albumen; cotyledons reniform or cordate, palmately 5-lobed, the margins irregularly involute or crumpled; radicle inferior.

Tilia with some thirty species is widely distributed in the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere with the exception of western America, central Asia, and the Himalayas. Tilia produces soft straight-grained pale-colored light wood, largely used for the interior finish of buildings, in cabinet-making, for the sounding-boards of pianos, wood-carving and wooden ware, and in the manufacture of paper. The tough inner bark is largely manufactured into mats, cords, fish-nets, coarse cloths, and shoes. Lime-flower oil, obtained by distilling the flowers of the European species, is used in perfumery. The flowers yield large quantities of nectar, and honey made near forests of Tilia is unsurpassed in flavor and delicacy. Many of the species are planted as shade and ornamental trees, and some of the European species are now common in the gardens and parks of the eastern United States.

Conspectus of the Species of the United States.

Surface of the leaves glabrous at maturity.

Leaves glabrous or almost glabrous when they unfold, coarsely serrate.

Leaves furnished with conspicuous tufts of axillary hairs, their lower surface light green and lustrous; pedicels glabrous or nearly glabrous.

1. T. glabra (A).

Leaves usually without tufts of axillary hairs, their lower surface not lustrous; pedicels densely hoary-tomentose.

2. T. nuda (C).

Leaves hoary-tomentose when they unfold.

Leaves soon glabrous.

Leaves coarsely serrate with stout teeth, their veinlets conspicuous; branchlets stout, bright red.

3. T. venulosa (A).

Leaves finely serrate with straight or incurved teeth, their veinlets less conspicuous; branchlets slender, pale reddish brown.

4. T. littoralis (C).

Leaves crenately serrate, glaucescent on the lower surface.

5. T. crenoserrata (C).

Leaves covered below early in the season with articulate hairs, becoming glabrous or nearly glabrous.

Leaves thin, coarsely serrate, green or glaucescent on the lower surface, with or without tufts of axillary hairs; summer shoots not pubescent.

6. T. floridana (C).

Leaves subcoriaceous, finely serrate, bluish green and lustrous below early in the season; tufts of axillary hairs minute, usually wanting; summer shoots pubescent.

7. T. Cocksii (C).

Surface of the leaves pubescent below during the season.

Lower surface of the leaves covered with short gray firmly attached pubescence; tufts of axillary hairs not conspicuous.

8. T. neglecta (A, C).

Lower surface of the leaves covered with articulate easily detached hairs.

Branchlets without straight hairs.

Leaves ovate, acuminate, usually obliquely truncate at base, glabrous above, their pubescence brownish or white.

9. T. caroliniana (C).

Leaves oblong-ovate, cordate or obliquely cordate at base, pubescent above early in the season.

10. T. texana (C).

Leaves semiorbicular to broad-ovate, abruptly short-pointed, deeply and usually symmetrically cordate at base.

11. T. phanera (C).

Branchlets covered with straight hairs; leaves ovate, abruptly short-pointed, oblique and truncate at base.

12. T. lasioclada (C).

Surface of the leaves tomentose below during the season with close firmly attached tomentum.

Tomentum white, gray, or brown; leaves usually glabrous on the upper surface; branchlets and winter-buds glabrous (occasionally pubescent in varieties of 13).

Branchlets slender; petioles not more than 1½′ in length; leaves oblong-ovate, acuminate or abruptly pointed, oblique and truncate or cordate at base; tomentum on the leaves of upper branches often brown; flowers ¼′—⅓′ long.

13. T. heterophylla (A, C).

Branchlets stout; petioles up to 3′ in length; leaves oblong-ovate, acuminate, obliquely truncate at base; tomentum always white; flowers /12′½′ long.

14. T. monticola (A).

Tomentum pale or brownish; leaves thickly covered above early in the season with fascicled hairs; branchlets tomentose; winter-buds pubescent.

15. T. georgiana (C).

1. Tilia glabra Vent. Linden. Bass Wood.

Tilia americana L.

Leaves broad-ovate, contracted at apex into a slender acuminate entire point, obliquely cordate or sometimes almost truncate at base, coarsely serrate with incurved glandular teeth, often slightly pubescent when they first appear soon glabrous with the exception of tufts of rusty brown hairs in the axils of the principal veins below, thick and firm, dark dull green on the upper surface, lighter, yellow-green and lustrous on the lower surface, 5′—6′ long and 3′—4′ wide; turning pale yellow in the autumn before falling; petioles slender, 1½′—2′ in length. Flowers ½′ long, opening early in July on slender slightly angled pubescent pedicels, in few-flowered slender-branched glabrous cymes; peduncle slender, glabrous, the free portion 3½′—4′ long, its bract rounded or pointed at apex, 4′—5′ long, 1′—1½′ wide, decurrent nearly to the base or to within ½′—1′ of the base of the peduncle; sepals ovate, acuminate, densely hairy on the inner surface and slightly pubescent on the outer surface, a third shorter than the lanceolate petals; staminodia oblong-obovate, bluntly pointed at apex, a third shorter than the petals; ovary villose; style covered with rufous tomentum. Fruit short-oblong to oblong-obovoid, rounded or pointed at apex, ⅓′—½′ long, and covered with short thick rufous tomentum.

A tree, usually 60°—70°, or sometimes 120°—130° high, with a tall trunk 3°—4° in diameter, small often pendulous branches forming a broad round-topped head, slender smooth glabrous light gray or light brown branchlets marked by numerous oblong dark lenticels, becoming darker in their second and dark gray or brown and conspicuously rugose in their third year. Winter-buds dark red, ovoid, about ¼′ long. Bark of the trunk about 1′ thick, deeply furrowed, the light brown surface broken into small thin scales. Wood light brown faintly tinged with red, with thick hardly distinguishable sapwood of 55—65 layers of annual growth; employed in the manufacture of paper pulp, and under the name of white wood largely used in wooden ware, cheap furniture, the panels of carriages, and for the inner soles of shoes.

Distribution. Rich often moist soil, formerly often in nearly pure forests; northern New Brunswick to the eastern shores of Lake Superior, the southern shores of Lake Winnipeg and the valley of the Assiniboine River, and southward to Pennsylvania, Ohio, eastern Kentucky, southern Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, eastern Nebraska and northern Missouri.

Often cultivated as a shade and ornamental tree in the northeastern states, and occasionally in Europe.

2. Tilia nuda Sarg.

Leaves thin, ovate, abruptly pointed at apex, obliquely truncate or unsymmetrically cordate at base, and coarsely serrate with long slender straight or slightly curved conspicuously glandular teeth, as they unfold, dark red and sparingly pubescent on the midrib and veins, glabrous at the end of a few days, without or rarely with small axillary tufts, dark green on the upper surface, pale yellow-green or glaucous (var. glaucescens Sarg.) on the lower surface, 4′—4½′ long and 2½′—3½′ wide; petioles slender, glabrous, 2′—2½′ in length. Flowers opening early in June, about ⅓′ long, on hoary-tomentose pedicels, in broad usually 10 or 12, sometimes 30 or 40-flowered long-branched glabrous cymes; peduncle glabrous, the free portion ⅘′—1¼′ in length, its bract oblong, often slightly falcate, cuneate or rounded at base, rounded at apex, glabrous, 3′—4′ long, ½′—1¼′ wide, decurrent nearly to the base of the peduncle; sepals acute, rusty-tomentose on the outer surface, glabrous on the inner surface; petals oblong-ovate, narrowed at the rounded apex; staminodia oblong-obovate rounded at the broad apex; style glabrous. Fruit ripening in September, subglobose to depressed-globose, covered with rusty tomentum, ¼′—⅓′ in diameter.

Usually a small tree with pale furrowed or sometimes checkered bark, small spreading branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and slender glabrous orange or red-brown branchlets. Winter-buds ovoid, obtusely pointed, dull red, glabrous, ⅙′—⅕′ long.

Distribution. Central and southwestern Mississippi (Hinds and Adams Counties); Dallas County, Alabama; West Feliciana and Calcasieu Parishes, Louisiana, to the valley of the Brazos River, eastern Texas, and to Hempstead County (Fulton and McNab), southern Arkansas; the var. glaucescens with the type, and near Page, Le Flore County, Oklahoma; in wet woods subject to overflow at San Augustine, San Augustine County, Texas, a variety (var. brevipedunculata Sarg.), differs from the type in the less coarsely serrate smaller leaves glaucescent below, in the shorter free portion of the peduncle of the inflorescence and its broader bract. A tree 25°—30° high, with slender glabrous dark red-brown branchlets.

3. Tilia venulosa Sarg.

Leaves broad-ovate, abruptly acuminate at apex, cordate or unsymmetrically cordate or obliquely truncate or cordate at base, coarsely serrate with gland-tipped teeth pointing forward, covered when they unfold with pale tomentum, soon becoming pubescent, and glabrous before the flowers open, dark yellow-green on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 4′—4¾′ long and broad, with a prominent pale yellow midrib slightly villose on the upper side near the base, and 9 or 10 pairs of remote primary veins without axillary tufts and connected by conspicuous cross veinlets; petioles stout, glabrous, 1¾′—2′ in length. Flowers opening early in July, ⅓′ long, on slightly pubescent pedicels, in broad slender-branched nearly glabrous cymes; peduncle stout, glabrous, red, the free portion 1′—1½′ in length, its bract oblong to slightly obovate, gradually narrowed and rounded at base, rounded at apex, glabrous on the upper surface, pubescent below on the midrib and veins, 3½′—6′ long and 1¼′—1½′ wide, longer than the peduncle and decurrent nearly to its base or to within 1′—1½′ of its base; sepals ovate, acute, pale pubescent on the outer surface, villose and furnished at base on the inner surface with a tuft of long white hairs, a third shorter than the lanceolate acuminate petals; staminodia oblong-obovate, rounded at apex, about as long as the sepals; stigma slightly villose at base. Fruit ripening the end of September, subglobose, ¼′—⅓′ in diameter, covered with loose light brown pubescence.

A tree, 60°—75° high, with stout red glabrous branchlets. Winter-buds ovoid, cylindric, obtusely pointed, dark red, ¼′—⅓′ in length.

Distribution. North Carolina, rocky “coves” in rich soil, Hickory Nut Gap, in the Blue Ridge, and near Saluda, Polk County, passing into var. multinervis Sarg., differing from the type in its obliquely truncate, not cordate, leaves with 12 or 13 pairs of more crowded primary veins, ellipsoid fruit, slender branchlets, and smaller winter-buds; a single tree near Saluda, Polk County.

4. Tilia littoralis Sarg.

Leaves ovate, abruptly short-pointed and acute or acuminate at apex, unsymmetric and rounded on one side and cuneate on the other, or symmetric and cuneate or oblique and truncate at base, and finely serrate with straight or incurved glandular teeth, covered above when they unfold with scattered fascicled hairs and tomentose below, soon glabrous, and when the flowers open, thin, yellow-green, paler, rarely glaucous (var. discolor Sarg.) on the lower than on the upper surface, 3′—4′ long and 1¾′—2′ wide, with a slender midrib and primary veins and small conspicuous tufts of rusty brown axillary hairs; petioles slender, glabrous, 1′—1½′ in length; leaves on young vigorous shoots broad-ovate, truncate or slightly cordate at base, more coarsely serrate, pubescent with fascicled hairs especially on the midrib and veins, 4′—5′ long and 3′—4′ wide; petioles densely pubescent. Flowers opening the middle of June, ⅓′ long, on pale tomentose pedicels, in small, compact, mostly 9—15-flowered, pubescent cymes; peduncle covered with scattered fascicled hairs, the free portion ⅗′—1′ long, its bract gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, rounded at apex, ciliate on the margins, pubescent on the midrib, otherwise glabrous, 2′—7′ long, ¼′—⅖′ wide, longer or shorter than and decurrent to the base or nearly to the base of the peduncle; sepals acuminate, pale pubescent on the outer surface, villose on the inner surface along the margins and at the base with long white hairs; petals acuminate; staminodia oblong-obovate, rounded at apex. Fruit ellipsoid to depressed-globose, apiculate, covered with pale brown tomentum, ¼′—⅓′ in diameter.

A tree with slender glabrous branchlets densely coated when they first appear with pale pubescence, soon glabrous, light reddish brown during their first summer, often bright red during their first winter, becoming purple the following year and ultimately light gray-brown. Winter-buds ovoid, glabrous or puberulous, bright red, about ⅕′ long and /12′—⅛′ in diameter.

Distribution. Georgia, shore of Colonel’s Island near the mouths of the North Newport and Medway Rivers, near Durham, Liberty County; the var. discolor with the type

5. Tilia crenoserrata Sarg.

Tilia floridana Sarg., not Small.

Leaves ovate, abruptly narrowed and acuminate at apex, usually oblique and unsymmetrically cordate or truncate or occasionally symmetrical and cordate at base, crenately serrate, the teeth tipped with minute glands, covered when they unfold with pale caducous tomentum, and at maturity dark green and lustrous above, glaucescent below, glabrous with the exception of minute axillary tufts of rusty hairs, mostly 3½′—5½′ long and 2¾′—3′ wide; petioles slender, glabrous, about 1¼′ in length. Flowers opening the middle of June, ⅓′ long, on hoary-tomentose pedicels, in compact mostly 10—18-flowered tomentose cymes; peduncle glabrous, the free portion 1′—1½′ in length, its bract oblong-obovate, cuneate at base, rounded at apex, glabrous, 3′—5′ long, usually about ⅘′ wide, decurrent nearly to the base of the peduncle; sepals acute, hoary-tomentose on the outer surface, coated with pale tomentum mixed with long white hairs on the inner surface; petals narrow-acuminate; staminodia oblong-obovate, notched at apex. Fruit ripening from the middle to the end of August, ellipsoid, conspicuously apiculate at apex, rusty-tomentose, ⅓′—⅖′ long and ¼′—⅓′ in diameter.

A tree, 25°—30°, rarely 60° high, with a trunk 10′—12′ rarely 18′—20′ in diameter, and slender glabrous red-brown branchlets. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, dark dull red, glabrous, ⅙′—⅕′ long.

Distribution. Near Albany, Dougherty County, Georgia, to central Florida (Levy, Columbia, Alachua, Putnam, Seminole and Orange Counties).

6. Tilia floridana Ashe.

Leaves broad-ovate, acuminate or abruptly acuminate at apex, cordate or obliquely truncate at base and coarsely serrate with apiculate teeth, tinged with red and tomentose below when they unfold, fully grown and glabrous or nearly glabrous when the flowers open late in May or in early June, and at maturity thin, glabrous, dark yellow-green on the upper surface, pale or rarely covered below with a silvery white bloom (var. hypoleuca Sarg.), 3½′—5′ long and 2½′—3½′ wide, with a slender midrib and primary veins; in the east usually without axillary tufts, often present and sometimes conspicuous westward; petioles slender, glabrous, ¾′—1′ in length. Flowers opening in early summer ⅕′—¼′ long, on hoary-tomentose rarely puberulous (var. australis Sarg.) pedicels, in few-flowered rather compact pubescent corymbs; peduncle pubescent, the free portion 1½′—2½′ in length, its bract oblong-obovate to oblong, rounded at apex, often falcate, glabrous, 3′—6′ long, ½′—¾′ wide, decurrent nearly to the base of the peduncle; sepals narrow, ovate, acuminate, hoary-tomentose on the outer surface, sparingly villose on the inner surface, two-thirds as long as the lanceolate petals; staminodia oblong-obovate, acute, nearly as long as the petals; style glabrous. Fruit ripening in August and September, subglobose to ellipsoid, rusty-tomentose, ½′ in diameter.

A tree, 40°—50° high, with a trunk 12′—15′ in diameter, and slender glabrous red-brown or yellow branchlets. Winter-buds obtuse, dark red-brown, glabrous, about ⅙′ long.

Distribution. North Carolina (Polk County) to western Florida and westward through northern and central Alabama, central Mississippi, northern and western Louisiana, eastern and over the Edwards Plateau to Kerr, Bandera and Uvalde Counties, Texas, and through southern and western Arkansas to eastern Oklahoma, Missouri and eastern Kentucky; in northeastern Mexico; the var. australis in Blount County, Alabama. A variety (var. oblongifolia Sarg.) with narrower more elongated leaves with more prominent tufts of axillary hairs occurs in Putnam, Leon and Gadsden Counties, Florida, on the bluffs of the Alabama River near Berlin, Dallas County, Alabama, in Hinds, Rankin and Adams Counties, Mississippi, in West Feliciana, Iberia (Avery Island) and Natchitoches Parishes, Louisiana, in Hempstead and Salina Counties, Arkansas, and in Harris, Anderson and Livingston Counties, Texas.

7. Tilia Cocksii Sarg.

Leaves ovate, abruptly acuminate at apex, very oblique at the truncate or rounded base, dentate with small remote glandular apiculate teeth, covered when they unfold with loose floccose pubescence, nearly glabrous when fully grown early in April, when the flowers open the middle of May dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, pale blue-green and lustrous below, and at mid-summer when the fruit ripens, subcoriaceous, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, with slender primary veins without or occasionally with minute axillary tufts, and connected by conspicuous straight or curved veinlets, 3½′—4′ long and 2½′—3′ wide; petioles slender, glabrous, ¾′—1′ in length; leaves on leading summer branchlets sometimes obliquely cordate, more coarsely serrate, covered on the upper surface with short fascicled hairs, and floccose-pubescent on the lower surface, 4′—5′ long and 4′—4¾′ wide, their petioles puberulous. Flowers opening the middle of May, ¼′ long, on tomentose pedicels, in compact pubescent many-flowered cymes; peduncle slender, glabrous, the free portion only ⅗′—⅘′ in length, its bract oblong, occasionally slightly obovate, rounded at the ends, hoary-tomentose on the under surface and pubescent on the upper surface when it first appears, and when the flowers open puberulous below and glabrous above, 3½′—6′ long, ½′—⅗′ wide and shorter than and decurrent to the base of the peduncle; sepals ovate, acuminate, pale pubescent on the outer surface, villose at the base on the inner surface, a third shorter than the lanceolate acuminate petals; staminodia oblong-obovate, rounded at apex, about half the length of the petals; style glabrous. Fruit ripening the middle of July, globose to depressed-globose, covered with loose brown tomentum, ¼′ in diameter.

A small tree with slender dull red glabrous branchlets, the leading branchlets in summer more or less pubescent. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, dull red, glabrous or pubescent on leading shoots, ⅕′—¼′ long.

Distribution. Louisiana, river banks and low woods, Lake Charles and West Lake Charles, Calcasieu Parish.

8. Tilia neglecta Spach.

Tilia Michauxii Sarg., not Nutt.

Leaves thick and firm, acute or abruptly narrowed and long-pointed at apex, obliquely concave or unsymmetrically cordate at base, coarsely serrate with straight apiculate teeth pointing forward, dark green, smooth, glabrous and lustrous above, covered below except on the midrib and veins more or less thickly with short gray pubescence often slightly tinged with brown, and furnished with conspicuous tufts of axillary hairs, usually 4′—5½′ long and 2½′—4½′ wide; petioles stout, glabrous, 1¼′—2½′ in length. Flowers opening in June and July about ⅖′ long, on pubescent or nearly glabrous pedicels, in long-branched slender glabrous mostly 5—15-flowered cymes; peduncle slender, glabrous, the free portion 1¼′—1½′ in length, its bract gradually narrowed and cuneate or unsymmetrically cuneate or rounded at base, rounded at apex, glabrous, 2¾′—4½′ long, ⅖′—⅘′ wide and longer than and decurrent nearly to the base or to within ⅗′ of the base of the peduncle; sepals broad-ovate, acute, ciliate on the margins, glabrous on the outer surface, covered on the inner surface with long white hairs, about half as long as the lanceolate petals rounded and notched at apex and rather longer than the spatulate staminodia; stamens included; style villose toward the base. Fruit ripening in September, ellipsoid, ovoid, obovoid, or depressed-globose, rounded or acute or rarely gradually narrowed and acuminate at apex, rarely 5-angled, covered with rusty or pale pubescence, usually about ⅓′ in diameter.

A tree, 75°—90° high, with a trunk sometimes 3° in diameter, smooth often pendulous branches forming a broad round head, and slender glabrous branchlets. Winter-buds ovoid, rounded at the narrowed apex, about ⅕′ long, with glabrous red-brown or light brown scales. Bark of the trunk about 1′ thick, deeply furrowed, pale reddish brown and covered with small thin scales.

Distribution. Rich moist soil, Province of Quebec, near Montreal, to the coast of Massachusetts and New York, through the middle states to the valley of the Potomac River and along the Appalachian Mountains to those of North Carolina, and to Iuka, Tishomingo County, Mississippi, and from central and western New York to northern Missouri.

9. Tilia caroliniana Mill.

Leaves ovate, oblique and truncate or cordate at base, abruptly long-pointed at apex, coarsely dentate with broad apiculate glandular teeth pointing forward, and coated below with a rusty or pale easily detached pubescence of fascicled hairs, coated when they unfold with hoary tomentum, soon glabrous on the upper surface, and at maturity dark yellow-green and lustrous above, 2¾′—4½′ long and 2½′—5′ wide; petioles stout, glabrous, 1′—1½′ in length. Flowers opening the middle of June, ¼′ long, on slender pubescent pedicels, in small stout-branched pubescent mostly 8—15-flowered cymes; peduncle slender, pubescent, the free portion ¾′—1¼′ long, its bract oblong-obovate, cuneate at base, rounded or acute at apex, nearly glabrous on the upper surface when it first appears, pubescent becoming glabrous or almost glabrous below, 4′—5′ long and ⅘′ wide, longer or shorter than and decurrent to the base or nearly to the base of the peduncle; sepals ovate, acuminate, ciliate on the margins, brown and covered with pale pubescence on the outer surface, coated on the inner surface with long white hairs; petals lanceolate, acuminate, a third longer than the sepals; staminodia oblong-obovate, rounded at apex, rather shorter than the petals; style tomentose at base or glabrous. Fruit subglobose, ellipsoid or obovoid, ⅛′ in diameter.

A large tree with slender red-brown glabrous or slightly pubescent branchlets. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, glabrous or rarely pubescent, about ¼′ long.

Distribution. Coast of North Carolina (Wrightsville Beach and the neighborhood of Wilmington, New Hanover County), southward in the immediate neighborhood of the coast to Liberty County, Georgia; western Louisiana to southern Arkansas (Hempstead and Clark Counties) common, and through eastern Texas to the Edwards Plateau (near Boerne, Kendall County); in Orizaba. Passing into

Tilia caroliniana var. rhoophila Sarg.

Differing from the type in its pubescent branchlets and winter-buds, its usually larger leaves, and in its tomentose corymbs of more numerous flowers. Leaves broad-ovate, abruptly short-pointed and acuminate at apex, oblique and truncate or cordate at base, coarsely serrate with broad apiculate teeth pointing forward, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, pale and thickly covered on the lower surface with persistent white or brownish pubescence, 4′—5′ long and 2½′—5′ wide, with a slender midrib and primary veins pubescent on the lower side, and small conspicuous axillary tufts of pale hairs; petioles stout, thickly coated with pubescence, 1′—1¾′ in length; leaves on vigorous shoots often 6′ long, and 5½′ wide, and occasionally 10′ long and 9′ wide. Flowers ¼′ long, on short hoary-tomentose pedicels, in wide thin-branched pubescent many-flowered (sometimes 50) cymes; peduncle thickly covered with fascicled hairs, the free portion ¼′ long, its bract oblong, unequally rounded at base, rounded at apex, glabrous on the upper surface, pubescent on the lower surface, 4′—6′ long, 1′—2′ wide, usually shorter than and decurrent nearly to the base of the peduncle; sepals acuminate, coated on the outer surface with pale or slightly rusty pubescence, villose and furnished at base on the inner surface with tufts of long hairs; petals lanceolate, acuminate and ciliate at apex, about a third longer than the sepals; staminodia spatulate, acute, about half the length of the petals; style coated at base with long white hairs. Fruit subglobose, covered with rusty tomentum, about ⅓′ in diameter.

A tree with slender branchlets thickly coated during their first year with pale pubescence, dark red-brown or gray and puberulous during their second season. Winter-buds covered with pale pubescence.

Distribution. Western Louisiana (Calcasieu and Jefferson Davis Parishes) to Hempstead County, Arkansas, and through eastern Texas to the valley of the upper Guadalupe River, Kerr County.

10. Tilia texana Sarg.

Leaves thin, oblong-ovate, abruptly contracted into a long slender acuminate point, cordate or obliquely cordate at base, finely dentate with broad apiculate teeth, early in the season pubescent above with scattered fascicled hairs and covered below with brownish slightly attached pubescence, and in the autumn light yellow-green, lustrous and nearly glabrous on the upper surface, slightly pubescent on the lower surface, 4′—5½′ long and 3¼′—5′ wide, with a slender midrib and primary veins sparingly villose on the upper side and nearly glabrous on the lower side, and small axillary tufts of brownish hairs; petioles slender, pubescent with fascicled hairs, 1′—1½′ in length; leaves on vigorous shoots often furnished with one or two large lateral acuminate serrate lobes, more coarsely dentate and more thickly covered on the lower surface with pubescence, often 5½′—6′ long and 3½′—6′ wide. Flowers opening the middle of June, ¼′ long, on slender tomentose pedicels, in small villose-pubescent mostly 7—10-flowered cymes; peduncle slender, slightly villose-pubescent, the free portion 1¼′—1½′ in length, its bract oblong-ovate to slightly obovate, unsymmetrically cuneate at base, rounded and occasionally lobed at apex, glabrous on the upper surface, densely pubescent early in the season, later becoming nearly glabrous on the lower surface, 3′—6′ long and ¾′—1¼′ wide, longer or shorter than the peduncle and decurrent to its base or to within 1½′ of its base; sepals ovate, acute, pale pubescent on the outer surface, covered on the inner surface with white hairs longer and more abundant near the base; petals lanceolate, acuminate, a third longer than the sepals; staminodia linear-lanceolate, acuminate; style hoary-tomentose at base. Fruit ellipsoid, covered with rusty brown tomentum, ⅓′ long and ¼′ broad.

A small tree with slender branchlets thickly covered during their first season with close pale pubescence, and pale and puberulous or glabrous in their second year; on vigorous terminal branchlets often with thicker, light rusty brown pubescence. Winter-buds ovoid, obtusely pointed, thickly covered with pale pubescence, ¼′ long.

Distribution. Texas, Brazos and Cherokee Counties, on Spring Creek near Boerne, Kendall County, and on the rocky banks of the Guadalupe River at Kerrville, Kerr County.

11. Tilia phanera Sarg.

Leaves semiorbicular to broad-ovate, deeply and usually symmetrically cordate at base, abruptly short-pointed at apex, finely dentate with straight or incurved apiculate teeth, glabrous above when they unfold with the exception of a few hairs on the midrib and veins, and thickly coated below with hoary tomentum, and at maturity thin, blue-green, smooth and lustrous on the upper surface, paler and often brownish and coated with a floccose easily detached pubescence of fascicled hairs or scabrate (var. scabrida Sarg.) on the lower surface, 2′—4′ wide and usually rather broader than long, with a slender midrib and primary veins pubescent on the lower side, and small axillary clusters of rusty brown hairs; petioles slender, coated when they first appear with hoary tomentum, glabrous or slightly pubescent in the autumn, 1′—1½′ in length. Flowers opening the middle of June, ⅕′ long, on tomentose pedicels, in compact villose mostly 16—20-flowered cymes; peduncle villose, the free portion 1¼′ in length, its bract obovate, cuneate at base, broad and rounded at apex, floccose-pubescent on the lower surface, nearly glabrous on the upper surface, 3′—3½′ long and ½′—1′ wide, longer than the peduncle and decurrent to its base or to within ¼′ of its base; sepals acuminate, pale pubescent on the outer surface, villose on the margins and furnished at base on the inner surface with a tuft of long white hairs, broader and shorter than the lanceolate acuminate petals; staminodia oblong-obovate, rounded at apex, style glabrous except at the base. Fruit ripening the end of September, ellipsoid, covered with rusty tomentum, ⅓′—⅖′ long and ¼′ wide, on a stout, densely floccose-pubescent pedicel.

A tree with slender light gray-brown often zigzag branchlets covered when they first appear with fascicled hairs and deciduous during their first summer. Winter-buds ovoid, obtusely pointed, terete, reddish brown, glabrous, ⅙′—⅕′ long.

Distribution. Texas, banks of Spring Creek, near Boerne, Kendall County; the var. scabrida on a low limestone bluff of the Blanco River, near Blanco, Blanco County, near College Station, Brazos County, and at Velasco, Brazoria County.

12. Tilia lasioclada Sarg.

Leaves ovate, abruptly contracted at apex into a short acuminate point, oblique and truncate or on weak branchlets, often nearly symmetric and deeply cordate at base, and finely serrate with straight apiculate teeth, covered above when they unfold with soft caducous hairs and pubescent below, and at maturity thick, bright green, smooth and lustrous on the upper surface, pale and covered on the lower surface with a thick floccose easily detached pubescence of fascicled hairs, pale on those of lower leaves and often rufous on those of upper branches, 4′—6′ long and 3¼′—5′ wide, with a slender midrib and veins covered below with straight hairs mixed with fascicled hairs, and small conspicuous axillary tufts; petioles covered when they first appear with straight hairs mixed with fascicled hairs, soon glabrous, usually 1¼′—1½′ in length, those of the leaves of weak branchlets very slender and often 2′—2½′ long. Flowers in May, ⅙′—⅕′ long, on stout villose pedicels, in long-branched mostly 10—15-flowered cymes more or less thickly covered with straight white hairs; peduncle covered with long white hairs, the free portion 1′—1¼′ in length, its bract rounded and unsymmetric or acute at base, rounded or acute at apex, the midrib more or less thickly covered on the lower side with straight hairs, otherwise glabrous, 3½′—5′ long and 1′ wide, decurrent nearly to the base or to within 1′ of the base of the peduncle; sepals narrow, acute, pubescent on the outer surface, villose on the inner surface, about one-third as long as the lanceolate acuminate petals; staminodia spatulate, rounded and often lobed at apex, about as long as the sepals; style slightly villose at base. Fruit ripening in September, globose or depressed-globose, covered with rusty tomentum, about ⅖′ in diameter.

A tree, sometimes 60° high, with a trunk 12′—24′ in diameter, heavy branches forming a broad round-topped head, and stout red-brown branchlets sometimes glabrous in early summer and sometimes covered more or less thickly during their first and second seasons with long straight hairs.

Distribution. Valley of the Savannah River, near Abbeville, South Carolina, to Shell Bluff, Burke County, Georgia; River Junction, Gadsden County, Florida.

13. Tilia heterophylla Vent.

Leaves ovate, obliquely truncate or rarely slightly cordate at base, gradually narrowed and acuminate at apex, finely dentate with apiculate gland-tipped teeth, pubescent above when they unfold with caducous fascicled hairs, and at maturity dark green and glabrous on the upper surface, covered on the lower surface with thick, firmly attached, white or on upper branches often brownish tomentum, and usually furnished with small axillary tufts of rusty brown hairs, 3¼′—5¼′ long and 2½′—2¾′ wide; petioles slender, glabrous, 1½′—1¾′ in length. Flowers ¼′ long, opening in early summer, on pedicels pubescent with fascicled hairs, in wide mostly 10—20-flowered pubescent corymbs; peduncle glabrous, the free portion /12′—⅙′ in length, its bract narrowed and rounded at apex, unsymmetrically cuneate at base, pubescent on the upper surface, tomentose on the lower surface when it first appears, becoming glabrous, 4′—6′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, nearly sessile or decurrent to within 1½′ of the base of the peduncle; sepals acuminate, pale-pubescent on the outer surface, villose on the inner surface and furnished at base with a tuft of long white hairs; petals lanceolate, acuminate, a third longer than the sepals; staminodia oblong-ovate, acute, sometimes notched at apex; style villose at base with long white hairs. Fruit ellipsoid, apiculate at apex, covered with rusty brown tomentum, about ⅓′ long.

A large tree with slender, glabrous, reddish or yellowish brown branchlets and oblong-ovate slightly flattened glabrous winter-buds ⅕′—⅓′ in length, the outer scales slightly ciliate at apex.

Distribution. White Sulphur Springs, Greenbrier County, West Virginia; Piedmont region of North and South Carolina and Georgia; near Tallahassee, Leon County, River Junction, Gadsden County, and Rock Cave, Jackson County, Florida; near Selma and Berlin, Dallas County, Alabama; Vevay, Switzerland County, and near the Ohio River, Jefferson County, Indiana; not common. Passing into the var. amphiloba Sarg., differing from the type in the fascicled hairs on the upper surface of the young leaves and in the often pubescent branchlets; woods in sandy soil near River Junction, Gadsden County, Florida, and Valley Head, DeKalb County, Alabama; and into var. nivea Sarg., differing from the type in the white tomentum on the lower surface of the leaves, the glabrous styles, in the tomentum on the lower side of the floral bract when the flowers open, the pubescent gray or pale reddish brown branchlets and in the puberulous winter-buds; deep woods, River Junction, Gadsden County, Florida. More important is

Tilia heterophylla var. Michauxii Sarg.

Tilia Michauxii Nutt.

Leaves ovate to ovate-oblong, acute or abruptly short-pointed at the broad apex, cordate, obliquely cordate, or rarely obliquely truncate at base, and coarsely serrate with apiculate teeth, pubescent above when they unfold with caducous fascicled hairs, and hoary-tomentose beneath, and at maturity thin, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface and coated below with short white or grayish white tomentum, 3½′—6′ long and 3½′—5′ wide, with a slender yellow midrib and primary veins usually without axillary tufts; petioles slender, sparingly villose when they first appear, soon glabrous, 1½′—2½′ in length. Flowers ⅓′ long, opening about the 1st of July, on slender puberulous pedicels ¼′ in length, in wide long-stemmed puberulous cymes; peduncle pubescent, becoming glabrous, the free portion 1¾′—2′ in length, its bract obovoid, rounded or acute at apex, 3½′—5′ long and ½′—1′ wide, decurrent to within ⅓′—¾′ of the base of the peduncle; sepals ovate, acuminate, ciliate on the margins, puberulous on the outer surface, tomentose on the inner surface, ¼′ long, shorter than the lanceolate acuminate petals; staminodia oblong-obovoid, rounded or emarginate at apex; style glabrous. Fruit ripening in September, subglobose, rusty-tomentose, ¼′—⅓′ in diameter.

A large tree with slender glabrous light red-brown branchlets. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, slightly flattened, red, about ¼′ in length. Bark of the trunk 1′ thick, deeply furrowed, reddish or grayish brown and covered with small thin scales.

Distribution. Pennsylvania, valley of the Susquehanna River (Lancaster County) to southern and western New York and through southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to northeastern Missouri (near Ilasco, Ralls County), and southward through eastern Kentucky and Tennessee to northeastern Mississippi, and along the Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia; southern Georgia (Dougherty and Decatur Counties), Dallas County, Alabama; southwestern Missouri (Eagle Rock, Barry County), and northwestern Arkansas (Eureka Springs, Carroll County, and Cotter, Marion County).

14. Tilia monticola Sarg.

Tilia heterophylla Sarg., in part, not Vent.

Leaves thin, gradually narrowed and acuminate at apex, ovate to oblong-ovate, very oblique and truncate or obliquely cordate at base, finely serrate with straight or incurved apiculate teeth, smooth, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, thickly coated on the lower surface with hoary tomentum, 4′—7′ long and 3′—5′ wide; petioles slender, glabrous, 1½′—3′ in length. Flowers from the middle to the end of July, ⅖′—½′ long, on stout sparingly pubescent pedicels, in mostly 7—10-flowered thin-branched glabrous cymes; peduncle slender, glabrous, the free portion 1⅓′—1½′ in length, its bract gradually narrowed and cuneate or rounded at base, narrowed and rounded at apex, glabrous, 4′—5½′ long and ⅘′—1′ wide, decurrent to within /24′—⅛′ of the base of the peduncle; sepals ovate, acute, ciliate on the margins, covered on the outer surface with short pale pubescence and with silky white hairs on the inner surface; petals lanceolate, acuminate, twice longer than the sepals; staminodia oblong-lanceolate, rounded at the narrowed apex, as long or nearly as long as the petals; style clothed at the base with long white hairs. Fruit ripening in September, ovoid to ellipsoid, covered with pale rusty tomentum, ¼′—⅓′ long and about ¼′ in diameter.

A tree rarely exceeding 60° in height with a trunk 3°—4½° in diameter, slender branches forming a narrow rather pyramidal head, and stout glabrous branchlets usually bright red during their first year, becoming brown in their second season. Winter-buds compressed, ovoid, acute or rounded at apex, light red, covered with a glaucous bloom, ⅓′—½′ long. Bark of the trunk ⅗′ in thickness, deeply furrowed, the surface broken into small thin light brown scales.

Distribution. Appalachian Mountains at altitudes usually from 2500°—3000°, Farmer Mountain, on New River, Connell County, Virginia, to Johnson City, Washington County. Tennessee, and to Highlands, Macon County, North Carolina.

15. Tilia georgiana Sarg.

Leaves ovate, abruptly short-pointed at apex, slightly unsymmetric and usually cordate on lateral branches and often oblique or truncate on leading branches at base, and finely dentate with glandular teeth pointing forward, when they unfold deeply tinged with red, covered above by fascicled hairs and tomentose below, when the flowers open the middle of June dark yellow-green, dull and scabrate above and covered below with a thick coat of tomentum, pale on those of lower branches and tinged with brown on those from the top of the tree, and conspicuously reticulate-venulose, and at maturity thick, dull yellow-green, pubescent or glabrous above, rusty or pale tomentose below, sometimes becoming nearly glabrous in the autumn, 2½′—4′ long and 2′—3′ wide; petioles slender, tomentose, 1′—1½′ in length. Flowers ¼′—⅓′ long, on slender pubescent pedicels, in compact slender-branched pubescent mostly 10—15-flowered corymbs; peduncle slender, densely pubescent, the free portion 1′—1½′ in length, its bract oblong to obovate, rounded at apex, rounded or cuneate at base, pubescent, becoming nearly glabrous, 2½′—4′ long and ¾′—1½′ wide, decurrent to the base or to within 1′ of the base of the peduncle; sepals ovate, acuminate, coated on the outer surface with pale pubescence and on the inner surface with pale hairs longest and most abundant at the base, not more than one-half the length of the lanceolate acuminate narrow petals; staminodia oblong-obovate to spatulate, acute, about two-thirds as long as the petals; style glabrous or furnished with a few hairs at the very base. Fruit ripens early in September on pubescent pedicels, depressed-globose, occasionally slightly grooved and ridged, covered with thick rusty tomentum, ⅕′—¼′ in diameter.

A small tree, with slender branchlets thickly coated during their first season with pale tomentum, and dark red-brown or brown and puberulous in their second year. Winter-buds covered with rusty brown pubescence, ¼′—⅓′ long.

Distribution. Coast of South Carolina, near Charleston; Colonel’s Island near the mouths of the North Newport and Medway Rivers, near Dunham, Liberty County, and at Brunswick, Glynn County, Georgia, to central and western Florida.

Tilia georgiana var. crinita Sarg.

Tilia pubescens Sarg., in part, not Vent.

Differing in the longer and more matted usually rusty brown hairs of the pubescence, usually less closely attached to the under surface of the leaves and often conspicuous on the young branches.

A tree, 30°—40° high, with a trunk rarely exceeding 15′ in diameter, and slender branchlets densely rusty pubescent during their first season, and during their third year becoming glabrous, red-brown, rugose and marked by occasional small lenticels. Winter-buds acuminate, dark reddish brown and covered with short reddish pubescence. Bark of the trunk ½′—¾′ thick, furrowed and divided into parallel ridges, the red-brown surface broken into short thick scales.

Distribution. Sandy woods near Bluffton, Beaufort County, and in the neighborhood of Charleston, South Carolina, and on Colonel’s Island near the mouth of the North Newport and Medway Rivers, near Dunham, Liberty County, Georgia.

XL. Sterculiaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with bitter astringent juice, mucilaginous bark, and alternate simple leaves, with stipules. Flowers perfect, regular; calyx of 5 sepals, imbricated in the bud; corolla 0 (in Fremontia); anthers extrorse; pistil of 5 united carpels; ovary 5-celled; styles united; ovules anatropous.

A family of about fifty genera mostly confined to the tropics. Its most important species, Theobroma Cacao L., of the West Indies, produces chocolate from the cotyledons. Firmiana simplex F. N. Meyer, of this family and a native of southern China, is often planted as an ornamental tree in the southern states, where it has sometimes become naturalized, and in California.

1. Fremontia Torr.

A tree or shrub, with stellate pubescence and naked buds. Leaves broad-ovate, lobed, thick, prominently veined, usually rufous on the lower surface, persistent; stipules minute, deciduous. Flowers solitary, terminal or opposite the leaves, pedicellate, subtended by 3 or rarely 5 minute caducous bracts; calyx subcampanulate, hypogynous, deeply 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud, petaloid, yellow, spreading, obovate, often mucronate, 1′ long, the 3 outer a little smaller than the others, pubescent on the outer surface, with a hairy cavity at the base of the inner surface; corolla 0; stamens 5; filaments alternate with the sepals, united to the middle into a column; anthers oblong-linear, incurved at the ends, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary 5-celled, the cells opposite the sepals; style filiform, elongated, terminated by an acute undivided stigmatic point; ovules numerous in each cell, horizontal. Fruit an ovoid acuminate 4 or 5-valved loculicidally dehiscent capsule densely coated with long matted hairs, the inner surface of the cells villose-pubescent. Seeds oval; seed-coat crustaceous, puberulous, with a small fleshy marginal deciduous ariloid appendage on the chalaza; embryo straight, in thick fleshy albumen; cotyledons oblong, foliaceous, three or four times longer than the short radicle.

Fremontia, named in honor of John C. Frémont, the distinguished explorer of western North America, is represented by a single species.

1. Fremontia californica Torr. Slippery Elm.

Fremontodendron californicum Cov.

Leaves usually 3-lobed, rarely entire or sometimes 5—7-lobed, 1½′ in diameter; petioles stout, ½′—⅔′ in length. Flowers appearing in July in great profusion on short spur-like lateral branchlets. Fruit 1′ long; seeds very dark red-brown, about /16′ long.

A tree, 20°—30° high, with a short trunk 12′—14′ in diameter, stout rigid branches spreading almost at right angles, and stout terete branchlets thickly coated when they first appear with rufous pubescence, becoming glabrous and light red-brown; more often a low intricately branched shrub. Bark of the trunk rarely more than ¼′ thick, deeply furrowed, the dark red-brown surface broken into numerous short thick scales. Wood hard, heavy, close-grained, dark brown tinged with red, with thick lighter colored sapwood. The mucilaginous inner bark is sometimes used domestically in poultices.

Distribution. Lower slopes of the California mountains; western base of Mt. Shasta to the San Pedro Mártir Mountains, Lower California; nowhere common west of the Sierra Nevada, but of its largest size on their western foothills; most abundant east of the Sierra Nevada in the region of the Mohave Desert, growing as a low shrub and sometimes forming thickets several acres in extent.

Occasionally cultivated in western and southern Europe as an ornamental plant.

XLI. Theaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with simple alternate leaves, without stipules. Flowers perfect, regular, hypogynous; sepals and petals 5, imbricated in the bud; stamens numerous; anthers 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; pistil of 3—5 united carpels; ovary 3—5-celled; styles as many as the cells of the ovary, partly united. Fruit capsular; embryo with large cotyledons.

The Camellia family with eighteen genera is principally confined to the tropics of the New World and to southern and eastern Asia. Two genera are represented in the flora of the southern United States, and of these Gordonia is arborescent. Its most important genus, Camellia of eastern Asia, contains the Tea plant, Camellia Thea Link, and several species cultivated for the beauty of their flowers.

1. Gordonia Ell.

Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, with an acuminate terminal bud, slender acuminate naked axillary buds, and watery juice. Leaves pinnately veined, entire or crenate, subcoriaceous and persistent, or thin and deciduous. Flowers axillary, solitary, long-stalked or subsessile; calyx subtended by 2—5 caducous bracts; sepals unequal, rounded, concave, coriaceous, persistent; petals free or slightly united, obovate, concave, white, deciduous; stamens numerous, filaments short, united at base into a fleshy cup adnate to the base of the petals and inserted with them, or long and inserted directly on the petals; anthers introrse, yellow; ovary sessile; style elongated, erect, 5-lobed at the stigmatic apex; ovules 4—8 in each cell, pendulous in 2 series from its inner angle, collateral, anatropous. Fruit a woody oblong or subglobose 5-celled capsule loculicidally 5-valved, with a persistent axis angled by the projecting placentas. Seeds 2—8 in each cell pendulous, flat, without albumen; seed-coat woody, usually produced upward into an oblong wing; embryo mostly straight or oblique, with oblong flat or oblique cotyledons; radicle short, superior.

Gordonia with sixteen species is confined to the south Atlantic states of North America and to tropical Asia and the Malay Archipelago.

The generic name is in honor of James Gordon (1728—1791), a well-known London nurseryman.

Conspectus of the North American Species.

Flowers long-pedicellate; filaments united into a cup; capsule ovoid, the valves not splitting from the base; seeds winged; leaves persistent.

1. G. Lasianthus (C).

Flowers subsessile; filaments distinct; capsule globose, the valves septicidally splitting from the base; seeds without wings; leaves deciduous.

2. G. alatamaha (C).

1. Gordonia Lasianthus Ell. Bay. Loblolly Bay.

Leaves coriaceous, lanceolate to oblong, acute at apex, gradually narrowed to the cuneate base, finely or remotely crenately serrate, usually above the middle only, dark green, smooth and lustrous, 4′—5′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, persistent; finally turning scarlet and dropping irregularly through the year; petioles stout, wing-margined toward the apex, channeled, about ½′ in length. Flowers pungently fragrant, about 2½′ in diameter, expanding in July and continuing to open successively during two or three months, on stout red pedicels thickening from below upward, 2½′—3′ long, and usually furnished with 3 or 4 ovate minute subfloral bractlets; sepals ovate to oval, ½′ long, ciliate on the margins with long white hairs, and covered on the outer surface with dense velvety pale lustrous pubescence; petals rounded at apex, gradually contracted at base, silky-puberulent on the back, white, incurved, 1¼′—1½′ long and 1′ broad, stamens united into a shallow fleshy deeply 5-lobed cup pubescent on the inner surface and adnate to the base of the petals; ovary ovoid, pubescent, gradually contracted into the stout style persistent on the fruit. Fruit ovoid, acute, pubescent, ¾′ long, and ½′ in diameter, splitting to below the middle; seeds winged, nearly square, slightly concave on the inner surface and rounded on the outer surface, rugose, dotted with small pale brown excrescences, nearly /16′ long and half the length of the thin membranaceous oblique pale brown wing pointed or rounded at apex; embryo filling the cavity of the seed, nearly straight; cotyledons subcordate, foliaceous.

A short-lived tree, 60°—75° high, with a tall straight trunk 18′—20′ in diameter, small branches growing upward at first and ultimately spreading into a narrow compact head, and dark brown rugose branchlets marked during several years by the horizontal slightly obcordate leaf-scars; or rarely a low shrub. Winter-buds ¼′—⅓′ long, and covered with pale silky lustrous pubescence. Bark of the trunk nearly 1′ thick, deeply divided into regular parallel rounded ridges, their dark red-brown scaly surface broken into many irregular shallow furrows. Wood light, soft, close-grained, not durable, light red, with lighter colored sapwood of 40—50 layers of annual growth; occasionally used in cabinet-making.

Distribution. Shallow swamps and moist depressions in Pine-barrens; southeastern Virginia southward near the coast to the shores of Indian River on the east coast and to Cape Romano on the west coast of Florida, ranging to the interior of the peninsula from Lake to De Soto Counties, and westward along the Gulf coast to southern Mississippi; most abundant in Georgia and east Florida; gradually becoming less abundant westward.

2. Gordonia alatamaha Sarg. Franklinia.

Leaves obovate-oblong, rounded or pointed at apex, gradually narrowed to the long cuneate base, remotely serrate, usually above the middle only, with small glandular teeth, bright green and lustrous on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, 5′—6′ long and 1½′—2′ wide; turning scarlet in the autumn before falling; petioles stout, wing-margined above, ¼′—½′ in length. Flowers 3′—3½′ in diameter, appearing about the middle of September, on short stout pedicels at first pubescent, finally glabrous, from the axils of crowded upper leaves, and marked by the broad conspicuous scars of 2 minute lateral subfloral pubescent bractlets; sepals nearly circular, ½′ in diameter, ciliate on the margins, and covered on the outer surface with short lustrous silky pale hairs; petals obovate, crenulate, white, membranaceous, 1′—1½′ long and 1′ broad, and densely coated on the outer surface with fine pubescence; filaments distinct, inserted on the petals; ovary conspicuously ridged, pubescent, truncate, and crowned with a slender deciduous style nearly as long as the stamens. Fruit globose, slightly pubescent, ¾′ in diameter, the valves splitting nearly to the middle and septicidally from the base to the middle; seeds 6—8, or by abortion fewer in each cell, closely packed together on the whole length of the thick axile placenta, nearly ½′ long, angled by mutual pressure, without wings.

A tree, 15°—20° high, with stout slightly angled dark red-brown branchlets covered with small pale oblong horizontal lenticels, and conspicuously marked by large prominent obcordate leaf-scars, with a marginal row of large fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds compressed, reddish brown, puberulous, ¼′—⅓′ long. Bark of cultivated plants smooth, thin, dark brown.

Distribution. Near Fort Barrington on the Altamaha River, Georgia; not seen in a wild state since 1790, and now only known by cultivated plants.

Often cultivated in the eastern states and hardy as far north as eastern New York and occasionally in eastern Massachusetts, and rarely in western and central Europe.

XLII. Canellaceæ.

Trees, with pungent aromatic bark, and alternate pellucid-punctate entire penniveined persistent leaves, without stipules. Flowers perfect, regular, cymose; sepals and petals imbricated in the bud; stamens numerous, hypogynous, with filaments united into a tube inclosing the pistil, and narrow extrorse anthers adnate to the tube and longitudinally 2-celled; pistil of 2—3 united carpels; ovary free, 1-celled, with 2—5 parietal placentas; styles thick; stigmas 2—5-lobed; ovules 2 or many. Fruit a berry; seeds 2 or several; seed-coat thick, crustaceous; embryo small in fleshy oily albumen.

The Wild Cinnamon family with five genera and a few species is confined to tropical America, south Africa and Madagascar, one species reaching the shores of southern Florida.

1. Canella P. Br.

A tree, with scaly bark, stout ashy gray branchlets conspicuously marked by large orbicular leaf-scars, and minute buds. Leaves obovate, rounded or slightly emarginate at apex, gradually narrowed to the cuneate base, petiolate, coriaceous. Flowers small, in many-flowered subcorymbose terminal or subterminal panicles of several dichotomously branched cymes from the axils of upper leaves or from minute caducous bracts; sepals 3, suborbicular, concave, coriaceous, erect, their margins ciliate, persistent; petals 5, hypogynous, in a single row on the slightly convex receptacle, oblong, concave, rounded at apex, fleshy, twice as long as the sepals, white or rose color; stamens about 20, staminal tube crenulate at the summit and slightly extended above the anthers; ovary cylindric or oblong-conic, 1-celled, with 2 parietal placentas; style short, fleshy, terminating in a 2 or 3-lobed stigma; ovules numerous, arcuate, horizontal or descending, attached by a short funicle, imperfectly anatropous; micropyle superior. Fruit globose or slightly ovoid, fleshy, minutely pointed with the base of the persistent style, 2—4-seeded. Seeds reniform, suspended; seed-coat black and shining; embryo curved in the copious albumen; cotyledons oblong; radicle next the hilum.

The genus consists of a single West Indian species, extending into southern Florida and to Venezuela.

The generic name is from canella, the diminutive of the Latin cana or canna, a cane or reed, first applied to the bark of some Old World tree from the form of a roll or quill which it assumed in drying.

1. Canella Winterana Gærtn. Cinnamon Bark. White Wood. Wild Cinnamon.

Leaves contracted into a short stout grooved petiole, 3½′—5′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, bright green and lustrous. Flowers about ⅛′ in diameter, opening in the autumn. Fruit ripening in March and April, bright crimson, soft and fleshy, ½′ in diameter; seeds about /16′ long.

A tree, in Florida 25°—30° high, with a straight trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, and slender horizontal spreading branches forming a compact round-headed top. Bark of the trunk ⅛′ thick, light gray, broken on the surface into numerous short thick scales rarely more than 2′—3′ long and about twice as thick as the pale yellow aromatic inner bark. Wood very heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, dark red-brown, with thick light brown or yellow sapwood of 25—30 layers of annual growth. The bitter acrid inner bark is the wild cinnamon bark of commerce. It has a pleasant cinnamon-like odor and is an aromatic stimulant and tonic.

Distribution. Florida, region of Cape Sable, Munroe County (Flamingo [A. A. Eaton], East Cape, Madeira Hammock), and widely distributed on the southern keys, usually growing in the shade of other trees; on the Bahama Islands and many of the Antilles.

XLIII. Kœberliniaceæ.

An intricately branched almost leafless tree or shrub, with thin red-brown scaly bark, stout alternate glabrous branchlets covered with pale green bark and terminating in a sharp rigid straight or slightly curved spine. Leaves minute, early deciduous, alternate, narrow-obovate, rounded at apex. Flowers perfect, on slender club-shaped puberulous pedicels from the axils of minute scarious deciduous bracts, in short umbel-like racemes below the end of the branches; calyx of 3 or 5 minute sepals imbricated in the bud, deciduous; petals 4, convolute in the bud, hypogynous, obovate or oblong, subunguiculate, white, much longer than the sepals; disk 0; stamens 8, free, hypogynous, as long as the petals; filaments thickened in the middle, subulate at the ends; anthers oval, attached on the back near the base, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary ovoid, 2-celled, contracted at base into a short stalk and above into a simple subulate style; stigma terminal, obtuse, slightly emarginate; ovules numerous, adnate in several series to the fleshy placenta, horizontal or dependent, anatropous. Fruit a 2-celled berry, black at maturity, subglobose, tipped with the remnants of the pointed style; flesh thin and succulent, the cells 1 or 2-seeded by abortion. Seed vertical, circinate-cochleate; seed-coat crustaceous, slightly rugose, striate; albumen thin; embryo annular; cotyledons semiterete; the radicle ascending.

The family is represented by a single genus.

1. Kœberlinia Zucc.

Characters of the family.

Kœberlinia with one species is North American.

The generic name is in honor of L. Koeberlin, a German botanist.

1. Kœberlinia spinosa Zucc.

Leaves not more than ⅛′ long. Flowers appearing in May and June, about ¼′ in diameter. Fruit /16′—¼′ in diameter.

A bushy tree, rarely 20°—25° high, with a short stout trunk sometimes 6°—8° long and a foot in diameter; more often a low branching shrub forming impenetrable thickets often of considerable extent. Wood very hard, heavy, close-grained, dark brown somewhat streaked with orange, becoming almost black on exposure, with thin yellow or nearly white sapwood of 12—15 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Dry gravelly mesas and foothills; valleys of the upper Colorado River (Big Springs, Howard County), and of the lower Rio Grande, Texas, westward through southern Texas and New Mexico to southern Arizona, and southward through northern Mexico, and in Lower California (San Jorge).

XLIV. Caricaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with bitter milky juice, and alternate long-petiolate persistent simple or digitately compound leaves, without stipules. Flowers unisexual or perfect, the perianth of the male and female flowers dissimilar; stamens in two series, inserted on the corolla; filaments free; anthers introrse. Fruit baccate.

The Pawpaw family with two genera is tropical American and Mexican, a single representative of the family reaching the shores of southern Florida.

1. Carica L.

Short-lived trees, with erect simple or rarely branched stems composed of a thin shell of soft fibrous wood surrounding a large central cavity divided by thin soft cross partitions at the nodes, and covered with thin green or gray bark marked by the ring-like scars of fallen leaf-stalks, and stout soft fleshy roots. Leaves simple, palmately lobed or digitate, crowded toward the top of the stem and branches, large, flaccid, subpeltately palmately nerved, and usually deeply and often compoundly lobed. Flowers regular, monœcious or polygamo-diœcious, white, yellow, or greenish white, in axillary cymose panicles, the staminate elongated, pedunculate, and many-flowered, the pistillate abbreviated and few or usually 3-flowered, generally unisexual and diœcious, occasionally polygamo-diœcious, each flower in the axil of a minute ovate acute bract; calyx minute, 5-lobed, the lobes alternate with the petals; corolla of the staminate flower salverform, gamopetalous, the tube elongated, 5-lobed, the lobes oblong or linear, contorted in the bud; stamens 10; filaments free, those of the outer row alternate with the lobes of the corolla and elongated, the others alternate with them and abbreviated; anthers 2-celled, erect, opening longitudinally, often surmounted by their slightly elongated connective; ovary rudimentary, subulate; pistillate flower, calyx minute, 5-lobed, persistent under the fruit; corolla polypetalous, petals 5, linear-oblong, erect, ultimately spreading above the middle, deciduous; ovary free, sessile, 1-celled or more or less spuriously 5-celled; style 0 or abbreviated; stigmas 5, linear, radiating, dilated and subpalmately lobed at apex; ovules indefinite, inserted in two rows on the placenta, anatropous, long-stalked; micropyle superior; raphe ventral; hermaphrodite flower, corolla gamopetalous, tubular-campanulate, the lobes erect and spreading or subreflexed; stamens 10, in 2 ranks, or 5; ovary obovoid-oblong, longer than the tube of the corolla, more or less spuriously 5-celled below. Fruit slightly 5-lobed, l-celled or more or less completely 5-celled, filled with soft pulp, many-seeded, that produced from the hermaphrodite flower long-stalked, pendulous, usually unsymmetric, gibbous, and smaller than that from the pistillate flower. Seeds ovoid, inclosed in membranaceous silvery white sac-like arils, occasionally germinating within the fruit; seed-coat crustaceous, closely investing the membranaceous inner coat, the outer coat becoming thick, rugose, succulent, and ultimately dry and leathery; embryo in the axis of fleshy albumen; cotyledons ovate, foliaceous, compressed, longer than the terete radicle turned toward the minute pale subbasilar hilum.

Carica with about twenty species is distributed from southern Florida through the West Indies to southern Brazil and Argentina, and from southern Mexico to Chile. One species grows probably indigenously in Florida. The milky juice of Carica contains papain, which has the power of digesting albuminous substances, and the leaves are often used in tropical countries to make meat tender.

The generic name is formed from the Carib name of one of the species.

1. Carica Papaya L. Pawpaw.

Leaves ovate or orbicular, deeply parted into 5—7 lobes divided more or less deeply into acute lateral lobes, these secondary divisions entire or rarely lobed, the lowest lobes forming a deep basal sinus, thin, flaccid, yellow-green, 15′—24′ in diameter, with broad flat yellow or orange-colored primary veins radiating from the end of the petiole through the lobes, and small secondary veins extending to the point of the lateral lobes and connected by conspicuous reticulate veinlets; petioles stout, yellow, hollow, enlarged and cordate at base, sometimes becoming 3°—4° in length before the leaves fall. Flowers often beginning to appear on plants only 3° or 4° high and a few months old, produced continuously throughout the year, the staminate in clusters on slender spreading or pendulous peduncles 4′—12′ long, the pistillate in 1—3-flowered short-stalked cymes; staminate flowers fragrant, filled with nectar, their corolla ¾′—1¼′ long, with a slender tube and acute lobes; anthers oblong, orange-colored, surmounted by the rounded thickened end of the connective, those of the inner row almost sessile and one third larger than those of the outer row, shorter than their flattened filaments covered, like the connectives, with long slender white hairs; pistillate flowers about 1′ long, with erect petals, without staminodia; ovary ovoid, ivory-white, slightly and obtusely 5-angled, 1-celled, and narrowed into a short slender style crowned by a pale green stigma divided to the base into 5 radiating lobes dilated and 3-nerved at apex. Fruits hanging close together against the stem at the base of the leaf-stalk, obovoid to ellipsoid, and obtusely short-pointed, yellowish green to bright orange color; in southern Florida not more than 4′ long and 3′ thick, and usually smaller, with a thick skin closely adherent to the sweet insipid flesh forming a thin layer outside the central cavity; seeds full and rounded, about /16′ long; outer portion of the seed-coat rugose at first when the fruit is fully grown but still green, ivory-white, very succulent, and usually separable from the smooth paler chestnut-brown lustrous interior portion, the outer part turning black as the fruit ripens and becoming adherent to the inner portion closely investing the thin lustrous light red-brown inner coat.

A short-lived tree, in Florida attaining a height of 12°—15°, with a trunk seldom more than 6′ in diameter; in the West Indies and other tropical countries often twice as large, with a trunk occasionally dividing into a number of stout upright branches. Bark thin, light green, becoming gray toward the base of the stem.

Distribution. Florida from the southern shores of Bay Biscayne on the west coast and of Indian River on the east coast to the southern keys, growing sparingly in rich hummocks; common in all the West Indian islands, in southern Mexico, and in the tropical countries of South America; now naturalized in most of the warm regions of the world, where it is universally cultivated for its fruit, which is considered one of the most wholesome of all tropical fruits, and has been much improved by selection.

XLV. Cactaceæ.

Succulent trees or shrubs, with copious watery juice, numerous spines springing from cushions of small bristles (areolæ), and minute caducous alternate leaves, or leafless. Flowers large and showy, perfect, usually solitary; calyx of numerous spirally imbricated sepals forming a tube, those of the inner series petal-like; corolla of numerous imbricated petals, in many series; stamens inserted on the tube of the calyx, very numerous, in several series, with slender filaments and introrse 2-celled oblong anthers, the cells opening longitudinally; pistil of several united carpels; ovary 1-celled, with several parietal placentas; styles united, terminal; stigmas as many as the placentas; ovules numerous, horizontal, anatropous. Fruit a fleshy berry. Seeds numerous, with albumen; cotyledons foliaceous; radicle turned toward the hilum.

The Cactus family with twenty genera and a very large number of species is most abundant in the dry region adjacent to the boundary of the United States and Mexico, with a few species ranging northward to the northern United States and southward to the West Indian islands, Brazil, Peru, Chile and the Galapagos Islands. Two of the genera have arborescent representatives in the flora of the United States.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Genera of the United States.

Branches and stems columnar, ribbed, continuous; leaves 0; flower-bearing and spine-bearing areolæ distinct; flowers close above spine-bearing areolæ; tube of the flower elongated; seeds dark-colored.

1. Cereus.

Branches jointed, tuberculate; leaves scale-like; flower-bearing and spine-bearing areolæ not distinct; tube of the flower short and cup-shaped; seeds pale.

2. Opuntia.

1. Cereus Haw.

Trees or shrubs, with columnar ribbed stems, and buds on the back of the ridges from the axils of latent leaves, geminate, superposed, the upper producing a branch or flower, the lower arrested and developed into a cluster of spines surrounded by an elevated cushion or areola of chaffy tomentose scales. Flowers lateral, elongated, the calyx-lobes forming an elongated tube, those of the outer ranks adnate to the ovary, scale-like, only their tips free, those of the inner ranks free, elongated; petals cohering by their base with the top of the calyx-tube, larger than its interior lobes, spreading, recurved; stamens numerous; filaments adnate by their base to the tube of the calyx, those of the interior ranks free, the exterior united into a tube; style filiform, divided into numerous radiating linear branches stigmatic on the inner face; stalks of the ovules long and slender, becoming thick and juicy in the fruit. Seeds with very thin albumen; embryo straight; cotyledons abbreviated, hooked at apex; radicle conic.

Cereus with at least two hundred species inhabits the dry southwestern region of North America, the West Indies, tropical South America, and the Galapagos Islands. Of the numerous species found within the territory of the United States only one assumes the habit and size of a tree. The fruit of several species is edible, and the ribs of the durable woody frames of the stems of the large arborescent species are used for the rafters of houses and for fuel. Many of the species are planted in warm dry countries in hedges to protect cultivated fields, and others are popular garden plants valued for their beautiful flowers, which are sometimes nocturnal and exceedingly fragrant.

The generic name relates to the candle-like form of the stem of some of the species.

1. Cereus giganteus Engelm. Suwarro.

Leaves 0. Flowers 4′—4½′ long and 2½′ wide, opening from May to July in great numbers near the top of the stem, each surrounded on the lower side by the radial spines of the cluster below it; ovary ovoid, 1′ long, rather shorter than the stout tube of the flower, and covered, like the base of the tube, by the thick imbricated green outer scale-like sepals, with small free triangular acute scarious mucronate tips, furnished in their axils with short tufts of rufous hairs and occasionally with clusters of chartaceous spines, gradually passing into thin oblong-ovate or obovate larger sepals, mucronate or rounded at apex and closely imbricated in many ranks; petals 25—35, obovate-spatulate, obtuse, entire, thick and fleshy, creamy white, ⅔′ long and much reflexed after anthesis; stamens, with linear anthers emarginate at the ends, and filaments united for half their length to the walls of the calyx-tube, those of the exterior rows joined below into a long tube, surrounding the stout columnar style glandular at base and divided at apex into 12—15 green stigmas. Fruit ripening in August, ovoid or slightly obovoid, 2½′ long and 1⅓′ wide, truncate and covered at apex by the depressed pale scar left by the falling of the flower, light red at maturity, separating into 3 or 4 fleshy valves bright red on their inner surface and inclosing the bright scarlet juicy mass of the enlarged funiculi and innumerable seeds; seeds obovoid, rounded, ⅙′ long, lustrous, dark chestnut-brown.

A tree, 50°—60° high, with a trunk sometimes 2° in diameter, thickest below the middle and tapering gradually toward the ends, marked by transverse superficial lines into rings 4′—8′ long, representing the amount of annual longitudinal growth, 8—12-ribbed at base with obtuse ribs 4′—5′ broad, and at summit 18—20-ribbed with obtuse deep compressed ribs, branchless or furnished above the middle with a few, usually 2 or 3, stout alternate or sometimes opposite upright branches shorter but otherwise resembling the principal stem composed of a thick tough green epidermis, a fleshy covering 3′—6′ thick saturated with bitter juice, and a circle of bundles of woody fibres making, with annual layers of exogenous growth, dense tough elastic columns placed opposite the depressions between the ribs, ½′—3′ in diameter and frequently united by branches growing at irregular intervals between them, the woody frame remaining standing after the death of the plant and the decomposition of its fleshy covering. Areolæ pale, elevated, about ½′ in diameter, bearing clusters of stout straight spines with a large dark fulvous base, sulcate or angled, tinged with red, with thick stout spines in the centre of each cluster, the 4 basal horizontal or slightly inclined downward, the lowest being the longest and stoutest and sometimes 1½′ long and /12′ thick, the upper shorter, more slender and slightly turned upward, with a row of shorter and thinner radial spines 12—16 in number surrounding the central group. Wood of the columns strong, very light, rather coarse-grained, with numerous conspicuous medullary rays, and light brown tinged with yellow; almost indestructible in contact with the ground, little affected by the atmosphere and largely used for the rafters of houses, for fences, and by Indians for lances, bows, etc. The fruit is consumed in large quantities by Indians.

Distribution. Low rocky hills and dry mesas of the desert; valley of Bill Williams River through central and southern Arizona to the valley of the San Pedro River and to the eastern border of the Colorado Desert between the Needles and Yuma, Yuma County, Arizona, and southward in Sonora.

2. Opuntia Adans.

Trees or usually shrubs, in the arborescent species of the United States with subcylindric or clavate articulate tuberculate branches, covered with small sunken stomata, and containing tubular reticulated woody skeletons, and thick fleshy or fibrous roots. Leaves scale-like, terete, subulate, caducous, bearing in their axils oblong or circular cushion-like areolæ of chaffy or woolly scales terminal on the branches and furnished above the middle with many short slender slightly attached sharp barbed bristles and toward the base with numerous stout barbed spines surrounded in some species, except at apex, by loose papery sheaths. Flowers diurnal, lateral, produced from areolæ on branches of the previous year between the bristles and spines, sessile, cup-shaped; sepals flat, erect, deciduous; corolla rotate; petals obovate, united at base, spreading; stamens shorter than the petals; filaments free or slightly united below; anthers oblong; style cylindric, longer than the stamens, obclavate below, divided at apex into 3—8 elongated or lobulate lobes stigmatic on the inner face. Fruit sometimes proliferous, covered by a thick skin, succulent and often edible, or dry, pyriform, globose or ellipsoid, concave at apex, surmounted by the marcescent tube of the flower, tuberculate, areolate, or rarely glabrous, truncate at base, with a broad umbilicus at apex. Seeds immersed in the pulpy placentas, compressed, discoid, often margined with a bony raphe; testa pale, bony, sometimes marked by a narrow darker marginal commissure; embryo coiled around the copious or scanty albumen; cotyledons large; radicle thin, obtuse.

Opuntia with many species is distributed from southern New England southward in the neighborhood of the coast to the West Indies, and through western North America to Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, the largest number of species occurring near the boundary of the United States and Mexico. Of the species of the United States at least three attain the size and habit of small trees. Cochineal is derived from a scale-insect which feeds on the juices of some of the Mexican species, and the fruit of several species is refreshing and is consumed in considerable quantities in semitropical countries. The large-growing species with flat branches are employed in many countries to form hedges for the protection of gardens and fields; and the branches saturated with watery juice are sometimes stripped of their spines and bristles and fed to cattle.

Opuntia is the classical name of some plant which grew in the neighborhood of the city of Opus in Bœotia.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Species of the United States.

Tubercles of the branches full and rounded below the areolæ.

Joints pale olive color, easily separable, their tubercles broad, mammillate; spines yellow; flowers pink; fruit proliferous, usually spineless, often sterile.

1. O. fulgida (H).

Joints green or purple, their tubercles narrow, ovoid; spines white to reddish brown; flowers purple; fruit yellow, sparingly spinescent, rarely proliferous.

2. O. spinosior (H).

Tubercles of the branches not full and rounded below the areolæ; joints elongated, dark green or purple, their tubercles elongated; spines brown or reddish brown; flowers green, tinted with red or yellow; fruit green, spinescent, rarely proliferous.

3. O. versicolor (H).

1. Opuntia fulgida Engelm. Cholla.

Leaves light green, gradually narrowed to the acuminate apex, ½′—1′ long. Flowers appearing from June to September, the earliest from tubercles at the end of the branches of the previous year, the others from the terminal tubercles of the immature fruit developed from the earliest flowers of the season, 1′ in diameter when fully expanded, with ovaries nearly 1′ long, 8—10 obtuse crenulate sepals, 5 erect stigmas, and 8 light pink petals, those of the outer ranks cuneate, retuse, crenulate on the margins, shorter than the lanceolate acute petals of the inner ranks, the whole strongly reflexed at maturity. Fruit proliferous, oval, rounded, 1′—1¼′ long and nearly as broad, more or less tuberculate, conspicuously marked by large pale tomentose areolæ bearing numerous small bristles, usually spineless or occasionally armed with small weak spines, hanging in pendulous clusters usually of 6 or 7 and occasionally of 40—50 fruits in a cluster, one growing from the other in continuous succession, the first the largest and containing perfect seeds, the others frequently sterile, dull green when fully ripe, with dry flesh, falling usually during the first winter or occasionally persistent on the branches during the second season, and then developing flowers from the tubercles; seeds compressed, thin, very angular, /12′—⅙′ in diameter.

A tree, with a more or less flexuous trunk occasionally 12° in height and sometimes a foot in diameter, a symmetric head of stout wide-spreading branches and thick pendulous joints sometimes almost hidden by the long conspicuous spines and beginning to develop their woody skeletons during their second or occasionally during their third season, the terminal or ultimate joints ovoid or ovoid-cylindric, tumid, crowded at the end of the limbs, pale olive color, 3′—8′ long, often 2′ in diameter, with broad ovoid-oblong tubercles, ½′—¾′ in length. Areolæ of pale straw-colored tomentum and short slender pale bristles, each areola bearing at first 5—15 stout stellate-spreading light yellow spines of nearly equal length, ¾′-1′ long and inclosed in loose lustrous sheaths, additional spines developing in succeeding years at the upper margin of the areolæ, the tubercles of old branches being sometimes furnished with from 40-60 spines persistent on the branches for 4-6 years. Bark of the trunk and of the large limbs about ¼′ thick, separating freely on the surface into large thin loosely attached scales varying in color from brown to nearly black on the largest stems, and unarmed, the spines mostly falling with the outer layers from branches 3′—4′ thick. Wood of old trunks light, hard, pale yellow, with broad conspicuous medullary rays, well marked layers of annual growth, and a thick pith.

Distribution. Plains of Arizona south of the Colorado plateau, and in the adjacent region of Sonora; not rare; apparently most abundant and of its largest size in the United States on the mesas near Tucson, Pima County, at altitudes between 2000° and 3000°.

2. Opuntia spinosior Toumey. Tassajo.

Leaves terete, tapering gradually to the setulose apex, about ¼′ long, remaining on the branches from four to six weeks. Flowers opening in April and May and remaining open for two or three days, 2′—2½′ in diameter, with ovaries about 1′ long, obovate sepals, broad-obovate dark purple petals, sensitive red stamens, and a 6—9-parted stigma. Fruits clustered at the end of the branches of the previous year, persistent during the winter and occasionally during the following summer and then sometimes proliferous, oval or rarely globose or hemispheric, frequently 2′ long and 1½′ thick, with yellow acrid flesh and 20—30 tubercles very prominent during the summer, nearly disappearing as the fruit ripens and enlarges, leaving it marked only by the small oval areolæ covered with short bristles, and bearing numerous slender spines deciduous in December as the fruit begins to turn yellow; seeds nearly orbicular, slightly or not at all beaked, ⅙′—⅕′ in diameter, and marked by linear conspicuous commissures.

A tree, with an erect trunk occasionally 10° high and 5′-10′ in diameter, numerous stout spreading limbs forming an open irregular head, and branches with joints 4′—12′ long and ¾′—1′ thick, covered with a thick epidermis varying from green to purple, and usually developing woody skeletons during their second season, their tubercles prominent, compressed, ovoid, ⅓′—½′ long. Areolæ oval, clothed with pale tomentum and short light brown bristles, their spines 5—15 on the tubercles of young joints and 30—50 on those of older branches, and slender, white to light reddish brown, closely invested in white glistening sheaths, stellate-spreading, ½′—¾′ long, those in the interior sometimes considerably longer than the radial spines. Bark of the trunk and of the larger limbs about ¼′ thick, spineless, nearly black, broken into elongated ridges, and finally much roughened by numerous closely appressed scales. Wood light, soft, pale reddish brown, and conspicuously reticulate, with conspicuous medullary rays and well defined layers of annual growth; sometimes used in the manufacture of light furniture, canes, picture-frames, and other small articles.

Distribution. Widely scattered over the mesas of southern Arizona south of the Colorado plateau and of the adjacent regions of Sonora.

3. Opuntia versicolor Coult.

Leaves terete, abruptly narrowed to the spinescent apex, ⅓′—½′ long, persistent on the branches from four to six weeks. Flowers opening in May, about 1½′ in diameter, with ovaries ⅝′ long, broad-ovate acute sepals, and narrow obovate petals rounded above and green tinged with red or with yellow. Fruit usually clavate, 2′—2½′ long, nearly 1½′ in diameter, with areolæ generally only above the middle and usually furnished with 1—3 slender reflexed persistent spines about ½′ long, or occasionally spineless, rarely nearly spherical and only about ¾′ in diameter, ripening from December to February, and at maturity the same color as the joint on which it grows, usually withering, drying, and splitting open on the tree, or remaining fleshy and persistent on the branches until the end of the following summer, and sometimes through a second winter, or often becoming imbedded in the end of a more or less elongated joint; seeds irregularly angled, with narrow commissures.

A tree, with an erect trunk occasionally 6°—8° high and 8′ in diameter, numerous stout irregularly spreading or often upright branches, and cylindric terminal joints generally 6′—12′ but sometimes 2° in length, ¾′—1′ in diameter, and covered with a thick dark green or purple epidermis, marked by linear flattened tubercles, their woody skeletons usually formed during their second season. Areolæ large, oval, clothed with gray wool, generally bearing a cluster of small bristles, and slender stellate-spreading brown or reddish brown spines, with close early deciduous straw-colored sheaths, 4—14 and on old tubercles 20—25 in number, the inner 1—4 in number, usually deflexed and unequal in length, the longest about ⅓′ long and longer than the radial spines. Bark of the trunk and of the large branches smooth, light brown or purple, usually unarmed, ½′—¾′ thick, finally separating into small closely appressed black scales. Wood reticulate, hard, compact, light reddish brown and rather lustrous, with thin conspicuous medullary rays, well-defined layers of annual growth, and thick pale or nearly white sapwood.

Distribution. Foothills and low mountain slopes of southern Arizona and northern Sonora; very abundant.

XLVI. Rhizophoraceæ.

Glabrous trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, and usually opposite coriaceous entire persistent leaves, with interpetiolar stipules. Flowers in axillary clusters; calyx-lobes valvate in the bud, persistent; petals inserted on the tube of the calyx and as many as its lobes; stamens inserted at the base of a conspicuous disk; anthers 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; pistil of 2—5 united carpels; ovary 2—5-celled; ovules usually 2 in each cell, suspended from its apex, collateral, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit usually indehiscent, 1-celled and 1-seeded.

The Mangrove family is tropical, with most of its seventeen genera confined to the Old World.

1. Rhizophora L. Mangrove.

Trees, with pithy branchlets, thick astringent bark, and adventitious fleshy roots. Leaves ovate or elliptic, glabrous, petiolate; stipules elongated, acuminate, infolding the bud, caducous. Flowers perfect, yellow or creamy white, sessile or pedicellate, bibracteolate, the bractlets united into an involucral cup, in pedunculate dichotomously or trichotomously branched clusters, the base of their branches surrounded by an involucre of 2 ovate 3-lobed persistent bracts, or 1-flowered; calyx 4-lobed, the lobes acute, coriaceous, ribbed on the inner surface and thickened on the margins, two or three times longer than the turbinate globose tube, reflexed at maturity, persistent; petals 4, induplicate in the bud, alternate with and longer than the calyx-lobes, inserted on a fleshy disk-like ring in the mouth of the calyx-tube, involute on the margins, coated on the inner surface with long pale hairs, or flat and naked, caducous; stamens 8—12; filaments short or 0; anthers attached at the base, introrse, elongated, connivent, areolate; ovary partly inferior, conic, 2-celled, contracted into two subulate spreading styles stigmatic at apex. Fruit a conic coriaceous berry surrounded by the reflexed calyx-lobes and perforated at the apex by the germinating embryo. Seed germinating in the fruit before falling, the apex surrounded by a thin albuminous cup-like aril; seed-coat thick and fleshy; embryo surrounded by a thin layer of albumen; cotyledons dark purple; radicle elongated, clavate, and when fully grown separating from the narrow exserted woody tube inclosing the plumule and developed from the cotyledons after the ripening of the fruit.

Rhizophora with three species is widely and generally distributed on the shores of tidal marshes in the tropical regions of the two hemispheres, one specie reaching those of southern Florida. It possesses astringent properties; the bark has been used in tanning leather, in dyeing, and as a febrifuge. The wood is hard, durable, and dark-colored. By means of the aerial germination of its seeds and in its power to develop roots from trunks and branches, Rhizophora is especially adapted to maintain itself on low tidal shores and is an important factor in protecting and extending them into the ocean. Roots springing from the stems at a considerable distance above the ground and arching outward descend into the water and fix themselves in the mud beneath, while roots growing down from the branches enter the ground and gradually thicken into stems. The fully grown radicle ready to put forth roots and leaves, and often 10′—12′ long, is thicker and heavier at the root end than at the other, and in detaching itself from the cotyledons and in falling the heavy end sticks in the mud, while the plumule at the other end, held above the shallow surface of the water, soon unfolds its leaves.

The generic name, from ῥίζα and φέρειν, was used by early authors to designate various climbing plants with thickened roots.

1. Rhizophora Mangle L.

Leaves ovate or elliptic, rounded or acute at apex, gradually narrowed at base, dark green and very lustrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 3½′—5′ long and 1′—2′ wide, with slightly thickened margins, a broad midrib, and reticulate veinlets; persistent for one or two years; petioles ½′—1½′ in length; stipules lanceolate, acute, 1½′ long, deciduous as the leaf unfolds. Flowers produced through the year, 1′ in diameter, pedicellate, in 2 or 3-flowered clusters on peduncles 1½′ long from the axils of young leaves; petals pale yellow, coated on the inner surface with long pale hairs; stamens 8 with villose filaments. Fruit 1′ long, rusty brown, slightly roughened by minute bosses, the hard woody thick-walled tube developed from the cotyledons protruding ½′—⅔′ from its apex after the germination of the seed, covering the plumule, and holding the dark brown radicle marked with occasional orange-colored lenticels and when fully grown 10′—12′ long and ¼′—⅓′ thick near the apex.

A round-topped bushy tree, with spreading branches usually 15°—20° high, forming almost impenetrable thickets with its numerous aerial roots, or occasionally 70°—80° high, with a tall straight trunk clear of branches for more than half its length, a narrow head, and stout glabrous dark red-brown branchlets, becoming lighter colored in their second year and then conspicuously marked by large oval slightly elevated leaf-scars. Bark of young stems and of the branches smooth, light reddish brown, becoming on old trunks ⅓′—½′ thick, and gray faintly tinged with red, the surface irregularly fissured and broken into thin appressed scales. Wood exceedingly heavy, hard, close-grained, strong, dark reddish brown streaked with lighter brown, with pale sapwood of 40—50 layers of annual growth; used for fuel and wharf-piles.

Distribution. Shores of Florida from Mosquito Inlet on the east coast and Cedar Keys on the west coast to the southern keys; most abundant south of latitude 29°, following the coast with wide thickets and ascending the rivers for many miles; on Cape Sable and the shores of Bay Biscayne sometimes growing at a little distance from the coast on ground not submerged by the tide, and here attaining its largest size, with tall straight trunks and few aerial roots; on Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Antilles, the west coast of Mexico, lower California, the Galapagos Islands, and from Central America along the northeast coast of South America to the limits of the tropics.

XLVII. Combretaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with astringent juice, naked buds, and alternate or opposite simple entire coriaceous persistent leaves, without stipules. Flowers regular, perfect, or polygamous; calyx 5-lobed, the lobes valvate in the bud; petals 5, valvate in the bud, inserted at the base of the calyx, or 0; disk epigynous; stamens 5—10, inserted on the limb of the calyx; filaments slender, filiform, distinct, exserted; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary 1-celled; style slender, subulate; stigma minute, terminal, entire; ovules usually 2, suspended from the apex of the cell, collateral, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit drupaceous, often crowned with the accrescent calyx. Seed solitary; albumen 0; embryo straight, with convolute cotyledons; radicle minute, turned toward the hilum.

Of the fifteen genera of this family, widely distributed through the tropics, three have arborescent representatives in southern Florida.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Genera of the United States.

Corolla 0; leaves alternate.

Calyx persistent; flowers in spikes; seeds without wings.

1. Bucida.

Calyx deciduous; flowers in capitate heads; seeds winged.

2. Conocarpus.

Corolla of 5 petals; calyx persistent; leaves opposite.

3. Laguncularia.

1. Bucida L.

A tree or shrub, with terete often spinescent branchlets. Leaves crowded at the end of spur-like lateral branchlets much thickened and roughened by the large elevated crowded leaf-scars, alternate, obovate to oblong-lanceolate, rounded and slightly emarginate or minutely apiculate at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, coriaceous, bluish green on the upper surface and yellow-green on the lower surface, pubescent while young, especially beneath, and glabrous at maturity with the exception of rufous hairs on the under surface of the stout midrib, and on the short stout petiole. Flowers perfect, greenish white, hairy on the outer surface, sessile in the axils of minute bracts, in lax elongated axillary clustered rufous-pubescent spikes; calyx-tube ovoid, constricted above the ovary, the limb campanulate, 5-lobed, the lobes valvate in the bud, persistent; petals 0; stamens 10, in two ranks, inflexed in the bud, unequal, 5 longer than the others and inserted opposite the calyx-lobes under the hairy 5-lobed disk, the others shorter, alternate with them and inserted higher on the calyx-tube; filaments incurved near the apex; anthers minute, sagittate; ovary included in the tube of the calyx; style thickened and villose at the base; ovules suspended on an elongated slender funiculus. Fruit ovoid, conic, oblique, and more or less falcate, irregularly 5-angled, coriaceous, light brown, puberulous on the outer surface, with thin membranaceous flesh inseparable from the crustaceous stone porous toward the interior. Seed ovoid, acute; seed-coat coriaceous, chestnut-brown; cotyledons fleshy; radicle superior.

Bucida with a single species is confined to tropical America, where it is distributed from southern Florida and the Bahama Islands through the West Indies to Guiana and Central America.

The generic name is from βοῦς, in allusion to the fancied resemblance of the fruit to the horns of an ox.

1. Bucida Buceras L. Black Olive-tree.

Leaves 2′—3′ long, 1′—1½′ wide, their petioles ⅓′—½′ in length. Flowers appearing in Florida in April, ⅛′ long, on spikes 1½′—3′ in length. Fruit about ⅛′ long.

A tree, with a single straight trunk, or often with a short prostrate stem 2°—3° in diameter, producing several straight upright secondary stems 40°—50° high and 12′—18′ in diameter, stout branches spreading nearly at right angles with the trunk and forming a broad head, and branchlets clothed when they first appear with short pale rufous pubescence mostly persistent for two or three years, becoming light reddish brown and covered with bark separating into thin narrow shreds. Bark of the trunk and of the large branches thick, gray tinged with orange-brown, and broken into short appressed scales. Wood exceedingly heavy, hard, close-grained, light yellow-brown sometimes slightly streaked with orange, with thick clear pale yellow sapwood of 30—40 layers of annual growth. The bark has been used in tanning leather.

Distribution. Florida, only on Elliott’s Key; widely distributed in brackish marshes through the West Indies to the shores of the Caribbean Sea and the Bay of Panama.

2. Conocarpus L.

A tree or shrub, with angled branchlets. Leaves alternate, short-petiolate, narrow-ovate or obovate, acute, gradually contracted and biglandular at base, glabrous or sericeous. Flowers perfect, minute, in dense capitate heads in narrow leafy terminal panicles, with acute caducous bracts and bractlets coated with pale hairs, on stout hoary-tomentose peduncles bibracteolate near the middle; calyx-tube truncate, obliquely compressed at base, clothed with pale hairs, the limb campanulate, parted to the middle, the lobes ovate, acute, erect, pubescent on the outer and puberulous on the inner surface, deciduous; petals 0; disk 5-lobed, hairy; stamens usually 5, inserted in 1 rank, or rarely 7 or 8 in 2 ranks; anthers cordate, minute; style thickened and villose at base. Fruits scale-like, broad-obovoid, pointed, recurved, and covered at apex with short pale hairs, densely imbricated in ovoid reddish heads; flesh coriaceous, corky, produced into broad lateral wings; stone thin-walled, crustaceous, inseparable from the flesh. Seed irregularly ovoid; seed-coat membranaceous, pale chestnut-brown.

The genus consists of a single species of tropical America and Africa.

The generic name, from χῶνος and καρπὸς, is in allusion to the cone-like shape of the heads of fruits.

1. Conocarpus erecta L. Buttonwood.

Leaves slightly puberulous on the lower surface when they first appear or coated with pale silky persistent pubescence (var. sericea, DC.), 2′—4′ long, ½′—1½′ wide, lustrous, dark green or pale on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, with a broad orange-colored midrib, obscure primary veins, and reticulate veinlets; petioles stout, broad, ½′ in length. Flowers produced throughout the year, in heads ⅓′ in diameter on peduncles ½′—1½′ in length, in panicles 6′—12′ long. Cone of fruit about 1′ in diameter.

A tree, 40°—60° high, with a trunk 20′—30′ in diameter, small branches forming a narrow regular head, and slender branchlets conspicuously winged, light red-brown, usually glabrous, or silky pubescent (var. sericea, DC.), becoming terete and marked by large orbicular leaf-scars in their second year; or sometimes a low shrub, with semiprostrate stems. Bark of the trunk dark brown, divided by irregular reticulating fissures into broad flat ridges broken on the surface into small thin appressed scales. Wood very heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, dark yellow-brown, with thin darker colored sapwood of about 10 layers of annual growth; burning slowly like charcoal and highly valued for fuel. The bark is bitter and astringent, and has been used in tanning leather, and in medicine as an astringent and tonic.

Distribution. Low muddy tide-water shores of lagoons and bays; Florida, Cape Canaveral and Cedar Keys to the southern keys; of its largest size in Florida on Lost Man’s River near Cape Sable; at its northern limits a low shrub; common on the Bahama Islands, in the Antilles, on the shores of Central America and tropical South America, on the Galapagos Islands, and on the west coast of Africa.

3. Laguncularia Gærtn.

A tree, with scaly bark, terete pithy branchlets, and naked buds. Leaves opposite, glabrous, thick and coriaceous, oblong or elliptic, obtuse or emarginate at apex, marked toward the margin with minute tubercles; their petioles conspicuously biglandular. Flowers usually perfect or polygamo-monœcious, minute, flattened, greenish white, sessile, in simple terminal axillary tomentose spikes generally collected in leafy panicles, with ovate acute hoary-tomentose bracts and bractlets; calyx-tube turbinate, with 5 prominent ridges opposite the lobes of the limb and 5 intermediate lesser ridges, furnished near the middle with 2 minute appendages, and coated with dense pale tomentum, the limb urceolate, 5-parted to the middle, the divisions triangular, obtuse or acute, erect, persistent; disk epigynous, flat, 10-lobed, the 5 lobes opposite the petals broader than those opposite the calyx-lobes, hairy; petals 5, nearly orbicular, contracted into a short claw inserted on the bottom of the calyx-limb, ciliate on the margins, caducous; stamens 10, inserted in 2 ranks; anthers cordate, apiculate; ovary 1-celled; style short, crowned with a slightly 2-lobed capitate stigma. Fruit 10-ribbed, coriaceous, hoary-pubescent, elongated, obovoid, flattened, crowned with the calyx-limb, unequally 10-ribbed, the 2 lateral ribs produced into narrow wings, 1-seeded; flesh coriaceous, corky toward the interior, inseparable from the thin-walled crustaceous stone dark red and lustrous on the inner surface. Seed suspended, obovoid or oblong; seed-coat membranaceous, dark red; radicle elongated, slightly longer and nearly inclosed by the green cotyledons.

Laguncularia consists of a single species of tropical America and Africa.

The generic name is from laguncula, in allusion to the supposed resemblance of the fruit to a flask.

1. Laguncularia racemosa Gærtn. Buttonwood. White Mangrove.

Leaves slightly tinged with red when they unfold, and at maturity dark green on the upper and lighter green or pale on the lower surface, 1½′—2½′ long and 1′—1½′ wide; petioles red, ½′ in length. Flowers ¼′ long, in hoary-tomentose spikes produced throughout the year from the axils of young leaves and 1½′—2′ long. Fruit about ½′ long.

A tree, 30°—60° high, with a trunk 12′—20′ in diameter, stout spreading branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and slender glabrous branchlets somewhat angled at first, often marked with minute pale spots and dark red-brown, becoming in their second year terete, light reddish brown or orange color, thickened at the nodes, and marked by conspicuous ovate leaf-scars; or northward in Florida a low shrub. Bark of the trunk ¼′ thick, brown slightly tinged with red, the surface broken into long ridge-like scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, dark yellow-brown, with lighter colored sapwood of 10—12 layers of annual growth. The bark contains a large amount of tannic acid and is sometimes used in tanning leather, and is astringent and tonic.

Distribution. Muddy tidal shores of bays and lagoons; southern Florida from Cape Canaveral and Cedar Keys to the southern keys; common and of its largest size in Florida on the shores of Shark River, Monroe County; common in Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Antilles, tropical Mexico and Central America, tropical South America and western Africa.

XLVIII. Myrtaceæ.

Trees or shrubs abounding in pungent aromatic volatile oil, with minute scaly buds. Leaves opposite, simple, mostly entire, pellucid-punctate, penniveined, persistent, the slender obscure veins arcuate and united within the thickened revolute margins; stipules 0. Flowers perfect, regular; calyx 4—5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud, or lid-like and deciduous; petals 2—5, imbricated in the bud, inserted on the margin of the disk, or 0; stamens very numerous, inserted in many ranks with the petals; filaments slender, inflexed in the bud, exserted; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary 2—4-celled; style simple, filiform, crowned with a minute stigma; ovules numerous or 2 or 3 in each cell, attached on a central placenta, anatropous or semianatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit baccate, crowned with the persistent calyx-lobes, 1—4-seeded. Seeds without albumen; seed-coat membranaceous.

The Myrtle family with seventy-four genera is chiefly tropical and Australasian, with representatives in southern Europe, extratropical Africa, and extratropical South America. Two genera are represented by small trees in the flora of southern Florida. To this family, beside the Myrtle, belong the Australian Eucalypti, large and important timber-trees largely planted in California, and the Guava, cultivated in Florida for its fruit.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Genera of the United States.

Calyx closed in the bud by a lid-like deciduous limb; petals 0.

1. Calyptranthes.

Calyx 4 or 5-lobed with persistent lobes; petals 4 or 5.

2. Eugenia.

1. Calyptranthes Sw.

Aromatic trees or shrubs, with terete or angled branchlets. Leaves complanate in the bud, penniveined, petiolate. Flowers minute, in subterminal and axillary pedunculate many-flowered panicles, their primary and secondary branches often racemose, the ultimate branches cymose; calyx-tube turbinate, produced above the ovary, closed in the bud by a slightly 4 or 5-lobed lid-like orbicular limb, opening in anthesis by a circumscissile line, the limb at first attached laterally, finally deciduous; disk lining the tube of the calyx; petals 2—5, minute, or 0; ovary 2 or 3-celled; ovules 2 or 3 in each cell, collateral, ascending, anatropous. Fruit 2—4-seeded. Seed subglobose or short-oblong; seed-coat shining; cotyledons foliaceous, contortuplicate; radicle elongated, incurved.

Calyptranthes with eighty species is confined to tropical America, with two species reaching southern Florida.

The generic name is from χαλύπτρα and ἄνθη, in reference to the peculiar lid-like limb which closes the calyx before the opening of the flower.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Species of the United States.

Leaves acuminate, pubescent below; petioles up to ½′ in length; inflorescence and young branchlets covered with silky rufous tomentum.

1. C. pallens (D).

Leaves abruptly pointed or obtuse at apex, glabrous; petioles not more than ⅙′ in length; inflorescence and young branchlets glabrous.

2. C. Zuzygium (D).

1. Calyptranthes pallens Griseb.

Chytraculia Chytraculia Sudw.

Leaves oblong or oblong-ovate, acuminate at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, pellucid-punctate above, marked with dark glands below, when they unfold pink or light red and covered with pale silky hairs, and at maturity coriaceous, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, coated with pale pubescence on the lower surface, 2½′—3′ long and ½′—¾′ wide, with a broad midrib orange-colored beneath; petioles stout, ⅓′—½′ in length. Flowers sessile, ⅛′ long, in long-stalked many-flowered clusters 2½′—3′ long and wide, covered like their bracts and the flower-buds with silky rufous pubescence, with slender divaricate branches, the ultimate divisions 3-flowered; petals 0. Fruit short-oblong or nearly globose, dark reddish brown and puberulous, with thin dry flesh; seeds short-oblong, rounded at the ends.

A tree, in Florida 20°—25° high, with a trunk 3′—4′ in diameter, small branches forming a narrow head, and slender branchlets at first wing-angled between the nodes and coated with short rufous silky tomentum, becoming in their second or third year terete, thickened at the nodes, light gray tinged with red and covered with small thin scales. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, with a generally smooth light gray or almost white surface occasionally separating into irregular plate-like scales. Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, brown tinged with red, with lighter colored sapwood of 30—40 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Florida, shores of Lake Worth, in the neighborhood of Bay Biscayne, Dade County, and on Big Pine Key, Elliott’s Key, Key Largo and Key West; on the Bahama Islands, on many of the Antilles and in southern Mexico.

2. Calyptranthes Zuzygium Sw.

Leaves elliptic, abruptly or gradually narrowed into a blunt point or obtuse at apex, cuneate at base, entire, covered with minute pellucid dots, glabrous, dark yellow-green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 1½′—2¼′ long and ⅗′—1¼′ wide, with a broad low midrib and slender primary veins arcuate and connected within the slightly revolute somewhat undulate margins; petioles deeply grooved, ⅛′—⅙′ in length. Flowers on slender pedicels ⅙′—⅕′ long, in axillary 1—3-branched few-flowered axillary cymes ¾′ long and ½′ wide, on slender peduncles 1′—1¼′ in length, the ultimate divisions of the inflorescence 1—3-flowered; petals wanting; style rather longer than the stamens. Fruit about ⅓′ in diameter.

A tree, in Florida sometimes 40° high, with a tall trunk 4′ or 5′ in diameter, covered with smooth pale gray bark, small branches and slender terete ascending ashy gray branchlets.

Distribution. Florida, Paradise and Long Keys in the Everglades, Dade County; on the Bahama Islands and in Cuba, Jamaica and Hayti.

2. Eugenia L.

Trees or shrubs, with hard durable wood and scaly bark. Flowers often large and conspicuous, on short bibracteolate pedicels, in axillary racemes or fascicles or dichotomously branched cymes, with minute caducous bracts and bractlets; calyx campanulate, scarcely produced above the ovary, the limb 4 or rarely 5-lobed; petals usually 4, free and spreading; ovary 2 or rarely 3-celled; ovules numerous in each cell, semianatropous. Fruit 1—4-seeded. Seeds globose or flattened; seed-coat membranaceous or cartilaginous; embryo thick and fleshy; cotyledons thick, more or less conferruminate into a homogeneous mass; radicle very short, turned toward the hilum.

Eugenia with some five hundred species is common in all tropical regions, with eight species reaching the shores of southern Florida, of these 6 are small trees. Several species are valued for their stimulant and digestive properties; some produce useful timber or edible fruit, and others are cultivated for the beauty of their flowers. Cloves are the flower-buds of Eugenia aromatica Baill., a native of the Molucca Islands; and Eugenia Jambos L., the Rose Apple, of southeastern Asia, is cultivated in all tropical countries as a shade-tree and for its delicately fragrant fruit.

The generic name commemorates the interest in botany and gardening taken by Prince Eugène of Savoy, who built the Belvidere Palace near Vienna in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and made a collection of rare plants in its gardens.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Species of the United States.

Flowers in axillary racemes or fascicles.

Flowers in short solitary or clustered axillary racemes.

Leaves ovate or obovate, rounded at apex, short-petiolate; fruit subglobose to short-oblong.

1. E. buxifolia (C, D).

Leaves ovate, contracted at apex into a broad point, distinctly petiolate; fruit globose, black, ½′ in diameter.

2. E. axillaris (C, D).

Flowers in axillary fascicles.

Leaves usually broad-ovate, narrowed at apex into a short point, subcoriaceous; fruit subglobose, rather broader than high, ⅔′—1′ in diameter, becoming black at maturity.

3. E. rhombea (D).

Leaves oblong-ovate, narrowed at apex into a long point, coriaceous; fruit subglobose to obovoid, ¼′—⅓′ long, bright scarlet.

4. E. confusa (D).

Flowers in dichotomously branched cymes. (Anamomis.)

Leaves ovate or obovate; cymes usually 3-flowered; flowers not more than ¼′ in diameter; fruit black.

5. E. dicrana (D).

Leaves oblong or broad-elliptic; cymes 3—15-flowered; flowers up to ½′ in diameter; fruit red.

6. E. Simpsonii (D).

1. Eugenia buxifolia Willd. Gurgeon Stopper. Spanish Stopper.

Leaves ovate or obovate, rounded at apex, sessile or narrowed into a short thick petiole, occasionally slightly and remotely crenulate-serrate above the middle, thick and coriaceous, dark green on the upper surface, yellow-green and marked with minute black dots on the lower surface, 1′—1½′ long and about 1′ wide, with a narrow conspicuous midrib; usually unfolding in November and remaining on the branches until the end of their second winter, and often turning red or partly red before falling. Flowers appearing in Florida from midsummer until early autumn, ⅛′ in diameter, on short thick pedicels, in short rufous-pubescent racemes clustered in the axils of old or fallen leaves, with minute lanceolate acute persistent bracts, and broad-ovate acute bractlets immediately below the flowers; calyx glandular-punctate, pubescent on the outer surface, with 4 ovate rounded lobes much shorter than the 4 ovate white petals rounded at apex, ciliate on the margins, and glandular-punctate. Fruit subglobose to short-oblong, black, glandular-roughened, crowned with the large calyx-lobes, usually 1-seeded, and about ⅓′ in diameter, with thin aromatic flesh; seeds ⅛′ in diameter, with a thick pale brown lustrous cartilaginous coat and a pale olive-green embryo.

A shrubby tree, in Florida rarely 20° high, with a short trunk occasionally a foot in diameter, small mostly erect branches, and terete slender branchlets coated at first with rufous pubescence, becoming at the end of a few months ashy gray or gray tinged with red, and often more or less twisted or contorted. Bark of the trunk rarely more than ⅛′ thick, light brown tinged with red, and broken into small thick square scales. Wood very heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, dark brown shaded with red, with thick lighter colored sapwood of 15—20 layers of annual growth; sometimes used for fuel.

Distribution. Florida, Cape Canaveral to the southern keys, and on the west coast from the banks of the Caloosahatchee River to Cape Sable; one of the commonest plants on the keys, forming on coral rock a large part of the shrubby second growth now occupying ground from which the original forest has been removed; on the Bahama Islands and on several of the Antilles.

2. Eugenia axillaris Willd. Stopper. White Stopper.

Leaves ovate, gradually or abruptly narrowed at apex into a short wide point, rounded at the narrowed base, thick and coriaceous, dark green on the upper surface, paler and covered with minute black dots on the lower surface, 1½′—2½′ long and ½′ wide, with a broad midrib deeply impressed above; petioles stout, slightly winged, about ⅓′ in length. Flowers appearing at midsummer, about ⅛′ in diameter, in short axillary racemes, on stout pedicels /16′—½′ long, covered with pale white hairs, and furnished near the middle or toward the apex with 2 acute minute persistent bractlets; calyx glandular-punctate, covered on the outer surface with pale hairs, 4-lobed, with ovate rounded lobes shorter than the 4 ovate glandular white petals. Fruit ripening in succession from November to April, globose, black, glandular-punctate, usually 1-seeded, ½′ in diameter, edible, rather juicy, with a sweet agreeable flavor; seeds subglobose, ¼′ in diameter, with a pale brown chartaceous coat, and light olive-green cotyledons.

A tree, 20°—25° high, with a trunk occasionally a foot in diameter, small branches, and terete stout rigid ashy gray branchlets often slightly tinged with red and covered with small wart-like excrescences; or toward the northern limits of its range a low shrub. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick and divided by irregular shallow fissures into broad ridges finally separating on the surface into small thin light brown scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, very close-grained, brown often tinged with red, with thin darker colored sapwood of 5—6 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Florida, shores of the St. John’s River to the southern keys; nowhere common; on the Bahama Islands and on several of the Antilles.

3. Eugenia rhombea Kr. & Urb. Stopper.

Leaves broad-ovate, narrowed into a broad point rounded at apex, and abruptly or gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, when they unfold thin and light red, and at maturity subcoriaceous, conspicuously marked with black dots, olive-green on the upper surface and paler on the lower surface, 2′—2½′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, with a narrow midrib; unfolding in Florida in May; petioles narrow-winged, ⅓′—½′ in length. Flowers ½′ in diameter, appearing in Florida in April or May on slender glandular pedicels ⅓′—⅔′ long and furnished at apex with 2 lanceolate acute persistent bractlets ciliate on the margins, in sessile axillary many-flowered clusters; calyx-tube much shorter than the limb divided into 4 glandular narrow lobes rounded at apex and one half the length of the broad-ovate rounded glandular white petals. Fruit ripening in Florida from September to November, ⅔′—1′ in diameter, slightly glandular-roughened, orange color, with a bright red cheek when fully grown, becoming black at maturity; flesh thin and dry; seeds almost globose, nearly ½′ in diameter, with a thick pale chestnut-brown lustrous coat and olive-green cotyledons.

A tree, 20°—25° high, with a trunk usually a foot in diameter, small branches, and slender terete branchlets at first light purple and covered with a glaucous bloom, becoming ashy gray or almost white. Bark of the trunk about /16′ thick, with a smooth light gray surface slightly tinged with red. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, light brown, with hardly distinguishable sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, Key West and Umbrella Key; on the Bahama Islands and on many of the Antilles.

4. Eugenia confusa DC. Red Stopper.

Leaves oblong-ovate, abruptly or gradually contracted into a long narrow point rounded or acute at apex, cuneate or occasionally rounded at base, thin and light red when they unfold, and at maturity dark green and very lustrous on the upper surface, paler and marked with minute black dots on the lower surface, 1½′—2′ long and ⅓′—⅔′ wide, with a thick orange-colored midrib barely impressed above and prominent reticulate veinlets; petioles stout, about ¼′ in length. Flowers barely ⅛′ in diameter, appearing in September on slender pedicels ¼′—½′ long and furnished near the apex with 2 minute acute bractlets, in many-flowered axillary clusters; calyx glandular-punctate, with 4 ovate acute lobes much shorter than the 4 broad-ovate rounded white petals. Fruit ripening in March and April, subglobose to obovoid, bright scarlet, ¼′—⅓′ long, glandular-roughened, usually solitary and 1-seeded, with thin dry flesh; seed nearly globose, about ⅛′ in diameter, with a thin crustaceous light brown lustrous coat and an olive-green embryo.

A tree, 50°—60° high, with a straight trunk 18′—20′ in diameter, stout upright branches forming a narrow compact head, and slender terete ashy gray branchlets. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, bright cinnamon-red, separating freely into small thin scales. Wood very heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, bright red-brown, with thick dark-colored sapwood of 50—60 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Florida, rich hummocks near the shores of Bay Biscayne, Dade County, and on Old Rhodes and Elliotts Keys; on the Bahama Islands and on several of the Antilles.

5. Eugenia dicrana Berg. Naked Wood.

Anamomis dichotoma Sarg.

Leaves ovate or obovate, acute or rounded and occasionally emarginate at apex, cuneate at base, chartaceous when they unfold, becoming subcoriaceous, glabrous, covered with minute black dots, 1′—1¼′ long and ½′—⅔′ wide, with a stout midrib; petioles stout, enlarged at base, coated at first with silky hairs, finally glabrous. Flowers appearing in Florida in May, ¼′ in diameter, in cymes produced near the end of the branches, in the axils of leaves of the year, on slender peduncles coated with pale silky hairs, sometimes 1-flowered and not longer than the leaves, more often longer than the leaves, dichotomously branched and 3-flowered, with 1 flower at the end of the principal division in the fork of its branches, or occasionally 5—7-flowered by the development of peduncles from the axils of the bracts of the secondary divisions of the inflorescence, each branch of the inflorescence furnished immediately beneath the flower with 2 lanceolate acute bractlets nearly as long as the calyx-tube; calyx hoary-tomentose, the lobes ovate, rounded at apex and much shorter than the ovate acute glandular-punctate white petals. Fruit ripening in Florida in August, reddish brown, ¼′ long, obliquely oblong, obovate or subglobose, roughened by minute glands; flesh thin, rather dry and aromatic; seeds reniform, light brown, exceedingly fragrant.

A tree, 20°—25° high, with a trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, and slender terete branchlets light red and coated with pale silky hairs when they first appear, becoming glabrous in their second year and covered with light or dark brown bark separating into small thin scales; or often a shrub, with numerous slender stems. Bark of the trunk /16′—⅛′ thick, with a smooth light red or red-brown surface separating into minute thin scales. Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, light brown or red, with thick yellow sapwood of 40—50 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Florida, rocky woods, Mosquito Inlet to Cape Canaveral on the east coast, and from the banks of the Caloosahatchee River to the shores of Cape Romano on the west coast, on Key West, and in the neighborhood of Bay Biscayne, Dade County; on the Bahama Islands and on several of the Antilles.

6. Eugenia Simpsonii Sarg.

Anamomis Simpsonii Small.

Leaves oblong, rounded and abruptly short-pointed or occasionally emarginate at apex, cuneate at base, or broad-elliptic, silky pubescent and ciliate on the margins when they unfold, soon glabrous, and at maturity coriaceous, dark yellow-green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler and dull on the lower surface, 1½′—2′ long and ½′—1′ wide, with a prominent midrib impressed on the upper side and obscure spreading primary veins united before reaching the thickened revolute entire margins of the leaf; petioles covered at first with snowy white tomentum, soon glabrous, slender, ⅛′—¼′ in length. Flowers fragrant, about ½′ in diameter, sessile in lateral 3—15-flowered cymes on slender finely appressed-pubescent peduncles longer or shorter than the subtending leaves, their bractlets acuminate and ⅓′ long; calyx-tube short-obconic, thickly covered with silky white hairs, the lobes rounded at apex, green, punctate, two of them orbicular-reniform, the others orbicular-ovate, shorter than the white concave, obovate to suborbicular erose ciliate sparingly punctate petals. Fruit ellipsoid, red, mostly ⅓′—⅖′ long; seed reniform, usually solitary.

A tree, occasionally 60°—70° high, with a trunk 15′—16′ in diameter, small erect and spreading smooth gray-brown or reddish brown branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and slender branchlets covered when they first appear with snowy white tomentum, soon glabrous, and bright or dull reddish brown, and marked in their second year with the nearly orbicular elevated conspicuous scars of fallen leaves. Bark of the trunk thin, smooth, reddish, marked by pale blotches.

Distribution. Florida, Arch Creek Hummock north of Little River, and on Paradise and Long Keys in the Everglades, Dade County.

XLIX. Melastomaceæ.

Trees, shrubs, or herbs with watery juice. Leaves opposite, rarely verticellate, 3—9-nerved, usually petiolate; stipules 0. Flowers regular, perfect, usually showy, rarely fragrant, in terminal clusters; calyx usually 4 or 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; petals as many as the lobes of the calyx, inserted on its throat, imbricated or convolute in the bud; stamens as many or twice as many as the petals, inserted in 1 series with them, often inclined or decimate; anthers 2-celled, attached at the base, opening by a terminal pore; ovary 2 or many-celled; style terminal, simple, straight or declinate; stigma capitate, simple or lobed; ovules numerous, minute, anatropous. Fruit capsular or baccate, inclosed in the calyx-tube; seeds minute; testa coriaceous or crustaceous; hilum lateral or basal; embryo without albumen.

This family with 164 genera and a large number of species is chiefly confined to the tropics, and is most abundant in those of South America.

1. Tetrazygia A. Rich.

Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets. Leaves opposite, petiolate, oblong-ovate to ovate-lanceolate, entire or denticulate, 3—5-nerved, persistent, scurfy, like the young branchlets, peduncles and calyx-tube. Flowers perfect in many-flowered terminal panicles or corymbs; calyx-tube urceolate or globose, adnate to the ovary, the limb constricted above the ovary and dilated below the apex, the lobes short or elongated; petals obovate, obtuse, convolute in the bud; stamens twice as many as the petals; filaments subulate; anthers linear-subulate, erect or slightly recurved, attached at base, 2-celled, opening by a minute pore at apex, their connective not extended below the cells; ovary 3—6-celled; style filiform, curved, exserted, surrounded at base by a short sheath 8—10-toothed at apex; ovules indefinite, minute, sessile on an axile placenta. Fruit a 3 or 4-celled berry, crowned by the persistent tube of the calyx; seeds numerous, minute, obpyramidal, thickened and incurved at apex; testa coriaceous, slightly pitted; hilum basal; cotyledons thick; radicle short, turned toward the hilum.

Tetrazygia with 14 species is confined to the West Indies and southern Florida where one species has been discovered, the only tree of the great family of the Melastomaceæ found in the United States.

The generic name is from τέτρα and ζυγόν in allusion to the often 4-parted flowers.

1. Tetrazygia bicolor Cogn.

Leaves oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, gradually narrowed and rounded at base, 3-nerved, entire, undulate and slightly thickened on the revolute margins, dark green on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 3′—4½′ long and 1′—1¾′ wide; petioles stout, ¾—1′ in length. Flowers appearing from March to May, ⅘′ in diameter, short-stalked, in open cymose panicles; calyx urceolate, 4 or 5-lobed, the lobes nearly obsolete; petals 4 or 5, oblong-obovate, reflexed after anthesis, white; ovary 3-celled, style surrounded at base by a short sheath 10-toothed at apex. Fruit ripening in late autumn or early winter, oblong to ovoid, conspicuously constricted at apex, ¼′—⅓′ in length and ⅙′—⅕′ in diameter.

In Florida a shrub, or in the dense woods of the keys of the Everglades a slender tree, often 30° high, with an erect trunk 3′ or 4′ in diameter, covered with thin light gray-brown slightly fissured bark, small spreading branches becoming erect toward their apex and gracefully drooping leaves; or in the sandy soil of open Pine-woods often less than 3° in height.

Distribution. Florida, on the Everglade Keys, Dade County; on the Bahama Islands and in Cuba.

L. Araliaceæ.

Trees, shrubs, or herbs, with watery juice and scaly buds. Leaves alternate, compound or simple, petiolate, with stipules. Flowers in racemose or panicled umbels; parts of the flower in 5’s; disk epigynous; ovule solitary, suspended from the apex of the cell, anatropous; raphe ventral, the micropyle superior. Fruit baccate. Seeds, with albumen.

The Aralia family with fifty-four genera is chiefly tropical, with a few genera extending beyond the tropics into the northern hemisphere, especially into North America and eastern Asia. The widely distributed and largely extratropical genus Aralia is represented by one arborescent species in the flora of the United States. Hedera, the Ivy, of this family, is commonly cultivated in the temperate parts of the United States, and some species of Panax and Acanthopanax from eastern Asia are found in gardens in the northeastern states.

1. Aralia L.

Aromatic spiny trees and shrubs, with stout pithy branchlets, and thick fleshy roots, or bristly or glabrous perennial herbs. Leaves digitate or once or twice pinnate, the pinnæ serrulate; stipules produced on the expanded and clasping base of the petiole. Flowers perfect, polygamo-monœcious or polygamo-diœcious, on slender jointed pedicels, small, greenish white; calyx-tube coherent with the ovary, the limb truncate, repand or minutely toothed, the teeth valvate in the bud; petals imbricated in the bud, inserted by their broad base on the margin of the disk, ovate, obtuse or acute and slightly inflexed at apex; stamens inserted on the margin of the disk, alternate with the petals; filaments filiform; anthers oblong or rarely ovoid, attached on the back, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary 2—5-celled; styles 2—5, in the fertile flower distinct and erect or slightly united at base, spreading and incurved above the middle, or incurved from the base and sometimes inflexed at apex, crowned with large capitate stigmas, in the sterile flower short and united. Fruit fleshy, laterally compressed or 3—5-angled, crowned with the remnants of the style; nutlets 2—5, orbicular, ovoid or oblong, compressed, crustaceous, light reddish brown, 1-seeded. Seed compressed; seed-coat thin, light brown, adnate to the thin fleshy albumen; cotyledons ovate-oblong, as long as the straight radicle.

Aralia with forty species is confined to North America and Asia.

The name is of obscure meaning.

1. Aralia spinosa L. Hercules’ Club.

Leaves clustered at the end of the branches, twice pinnate, 3°—4° long and 2½° wide, with a stout light brown petiole 18′—20′ in length, clasping the stem with an enlarged base and armed with slender prickles, or occasionally unarmed; pinnæ unequally pinnate, usually with 5 or 6 pairs of lateral leaflets and a long-stalked terminal leaflet, and often furnished at base with a pinnate or simple leaflet; leaflets ovate, acute, dentate or crenate, cuneate or more or less rounded at base, short-petiolulate, when they unfold lustrous, bronze-green, and slightly pilose on the midrib and primary veins, and at maturity thin, dark green above, pale beneath, 2′—3′ long and 1½′ wide, with a thin midrib occasionally furnished with small prickles and slender primary veins nearly parallel with their margins; in the autumn turning light yellow before falling; stipules acute, about 1′ long, at first puberulous on the back and ciliate on the margins. Flowers /16′ long, appearing at midsummer on long slender pubescent straw-colored pedicels, in many-flowered umbels arranged in compound panicles, with light brown puberulous branches becoming purple in the autumn, forming a terminal racemose cluster 3°—4° long, and rising solitary or 2 or 3 together above the spreading leaves; bracts and bractlets lanceolate, acute, scarious, persistent; petals white, acute, inflexed at apex; ovary often abortive; styles connivent. Fruit ripening in autumn, black, ⅛′ in diameter, globose, 3—5-angled, crowned with the blackened styles, with thin purple very juicy flesh; seeds oblong, rounded at the ends, about /10′ long.

A tree, 30°—35° high, with a trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, stout wide-spreading branches, and branchlets ½′—⅔′ in diameter, armed like the branches and young trunks with stout straight or slightly incurved orange-colored scattered prickles, and nearly encircled by the conspicuous narrow leaf-scars marked by a row of prominent fibro-vascular bundle-scars, light orange-colored in their first season, lustrous and marked irregularly with oblong pale lenticels, becoming light brown in their second year, with bright green inner bark; more often a shrub, with a cluster of unbranched stems 6°—20° tall. Winter-buds: terminal conic, blunt at apex, ½′—¾′ long, with thin chestnut-brown scales; axillary triangular, flattened, about ¼′ long and broad. Bark of the trunk dark brown, about ⅛′ thick, and divided by broad shallow fissures into wide rounded ridges irregularly broken on the surface. Wood close-grained, light, soft, brittle, brown streaked with yellow, with lighter colored sapwood of 2 or 3 layers of annual growth. The bark of the roots and the berries are stimulant and diaphoretic, and are sometimes used in medicine and in domestic practice.

Distribution. Deep moist soil in the neighborhood of streams; southern Pennsylvania to southern Indiana, southeastern Iowa and southeastern Missouri, and southward to northern Florida, western Louisiana, and eastern Texas; probably of its largest size on the foothills of the Big Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.

Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental plant in the eastern states and in western Europe; hardy in eastern Massachusetts.

LI. Nyssaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, scaly buds, alternate entire dentate or serrate deciduous leaves, without stipules. Flowers diœcious, polygamo-diœcious or perfect; staminate, calyx minute, 5-toothed or lobed; petals 5 or more, imbricated in the bud, or 0; stamens as many, twice as many, or fewer than the petals, usually in 2 series; filaments sometimes of 2 lengths, elongated, filiform or subulate; disk fleshy, depressed at apex; pistillate flowers, calyx-tube adnate to the ovary; petals 5 or more, imbricated in the bud; ovary 1-celled or 6—10-celled; ovule solitary, pendulous from the apex of the cell, anatropous; micropyle superior; disk epigynous, pulvinate, the apex depressed or convex, or 0; style subulate, curved or spirally involute at apex, or 2-parted, or conic and divided into as many stigmatic lobes as the cells of the ovary. Fruit drupaceous or subsamaroid, crowned with the remnants of the calyx, 1-celled and 1-seeded, or 3—5-celled, the cells thin, 4-seeded; seed pendent, testa membranaceous or thin, albumen fleshy; cotyledons foliaceous or thin; radicle cylindric.

Nyssaceæ with 3 genera, Nyssa L., Camptotheca Decne. and Davidia Baill. and 8 species is confined to eastern North America, western China, Thibet, the Himalayas and the Malay Archipelago.

1. Nyssa L.

Trees, with leaves conduplicate in the bud, petiolate, sometimes remotely angulate or toothed, mostly crowded at the end of the branches. Flowers polygamo-diœcious, minute, greenish white; staminate on slender pedicels from the axils of minute caducous bracts, in simple or compound clusters on long axillary peduncles bibracteolate near the middle or at the apex or sometimes without bractlets; calyx disciform or cup-shaped, the limb 5-toothed; petals 5, imbricated in the bud, equal or unequal, ovate or linear-oblong, thick, inserted on the margin of the conspicuous pulvinate entire or lobed disk, erect; stamens 5—12, exserted; filaments filiform; anthers oblong; ovary 0; pistillate flowers on axillary peduncles, in 2 or few-flowered clusters, sessile or nearly so, in the axils of conspicuous bracts and furnished with 1 or 2 small lateral bractlets, or solitary and surrounded by 2—4 bractlets; calyx-tube campanulate, sometimes slightly urceolate, the limb 5-toothed; petals small, thick, and spreading; stamens 5—10; filaments short; anthers fertile or sterile; disk less developed than in the staminate flower, depressed in the centre; ovary 1 or 2-celled; style terete, elongated, recurved, stigmatic toward the apex or the inner face; raphe ventral. Fruit drupaceous, short-oblong, fleshy, urceolate at apex; flesh thin, oily, acidulous; stone thick-walled, bony, terete or compressed, ribbed or winged, 1 or rarely 2-celled, usually 1-seeded. Seed filling the cavity of the stone; seed-coat pale; embryo straight.

Nyssa with six species is confined to the eastern United States and to southern and eastern Asia, where one species is distributed from the eastern Himalayas to the island of Java and another occurs in central and western China. The American species produce tough wood, with intricately contorted and twisted grain.

Nyssa, the name of a nymph, was given to this genus from the fact that one of the species grows in water.

Conspectus of the North American Species.

Pistillate flowers in 2 or few-flowered clusters, their calyx disciform; fruit blue, not more than ⅔′ long; stone with broad rounded ribs.

Stone indistinctly ribbed; leaves linear-oblong to oval or obovate.

1. N. sylvatica (A, C).

Stone prominently ribbed; leaves oblanceolate to oblong or elliptic.

2. N. biflora (C).

Pistillate flowers solitary, their calyx cup-shaped; fruit 1′ or more long.

Fruit red; stone with prominent wings; leaves oblong-oval or obovate, usually obtuse at apex.

3. N. ogeche (C).

Fruit purple; stone with acute ridges; leaves oval or oblong, acute or acuminate at apex.

4. N. aquatica (A, C).

1. Nyssa sylvatica Marsh. Tupelo. Pepperidge. Sour Gum.

Leaves crowded at the end of lateral branchlets or remote on vigorous shoots, linear-oblong, lanceolate, oval or obovate, acute or acuminate or sometimes contracted into a short broad point at apex, cuneate or occasionally rounded at base, entire, with slightly thickened margins, or rarely coarsely dentate, coated when they unfold with rufous tomentum, especially on the lower surface, or pubescent or sometimes nearly glabrous, and at maturity thick and firm, dark green and lustrous above, pale and often villose below, principally along the broad midrib and on the primary veins, 2′—5′ long and ½′—3′ wide; turning early in autumn bright scarlet on the upper surface only; petioles slender or stout, terete or wing-margined, ciliate, ¼′—1½′ in length, and often bright red. Flowers appearing in early spring when the leaves are about one third grown on slender pubescent or tomentose peduncles ½′—1½′ long, staminate in many-flowered dense or lax compound heads, pistillate in 2 to several-flowered clusters, sessile in the axils of conspicuous often foliaceous bracts, and furnished with 2 smaller acute hairy bractlets; calyx of the staminate flower disciform; petals thick, ovate-oblong, acute, rounded at apex, erect or slightly spreading, early deciduous; stamens exserted in the staminate flower, shorter than the petals in the pistillate flower; stigma stout, exserted, reflexed above the middle, 0 in the staminate flower. Fruit ripening in October, 1—3 from each flower-cluster, ovoid, ⅓′—⅔′ long, dark blue, with thin acrid flesh; stone light brown, ovoid, rounded at base, pointed at apex, terete or more or less flattened, and 10—12-ribbed, with narrow indistinct pale ribs rounded on the back.

A tree, with thick hard roots and few rootlets, often surrounded by root-sprouts, occasionally 100° or rarely 125° high, with a trunk sometimes 5° in diameter, numerous slender pendulous tough flexible branches forming a head sometimes short, cylindric and flat-topped, sometimes low and broad, or on trees crowded in the forest narrow, pyramidal or conic, and sometimes inversely conic and broad and flat at the top, and branchlets when they first appear light green to orange color, and in their first winter nearly glabrous or pale or rufous-pubescent, light red-brown marked by minute scattered pale lenticels and by small lunate leaf-scars displaying the ends of 3 conspicuous groups of fibro-vascular bundles, later becoming darker and developing short stout spur-like lateral branchlets; generally in the northern and extreme southern states much smaller, and rarely more than 50°-60° tall. Winter-buds obtuse, ¼′ long, with ovate acute apiculate dark red puberulous imbricated scales, those of the inner ranks accrescent, bright-colored at maturity, and marking the base of the branchlet with obscure ring-like scars. Bark of the trunk ¾′—1½′ thick, light brown often tinged with red, and deeply fissured, the surface of the ridges covered with small irregularly shaped scales. Wood heavy, soft, strong, very tough, not durable, light yellow or nearly white, with thick lighter colored sapwood of 80—100 layers of annual growth; used for the hubs of wheels, rollers in glass factories, ox-yokes, wharf-piles, and sometimes for the soles of shoes.

Distribution. Borders of swamps in wet imperfectly drained soil, and often especially southward on high wooded mountain slopes; valley of the Kennebec River, Maine, to southern Ontario, central Michigan, southeastern Missouri and eastern Oklahoma, and southward to northern Florida, and to the valley of the Brazos River, Texas; of its largest size on the southern Appalachian Mountains.

Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental tree in the eastern states, but difficult to transplant except when very young. The first tree in the eastern states to assume autumn colors of the leaves.

2. Nyssa biflora Walt.

Leaves oblanceolate, oblong, elliptic or rarely ovate, acute or acuminate or occasionally rounded at the narrow apex, cuneate or rounded at the gradually narrowed base, and entire, when they unfold silky-villose above and hoary-tomentose beneath, soon becoming glabrous, dark yellow-green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler and sometimes glaucous on the lower surface, 2′—4′ long and ¾′—1′ wide, with a prominent midrib and numerous slender veins; petioles stout, ¼′—½′ in length. Flowers appearing when the leaves are nearly fully grown; staminate on slender villose pedicels, in many-flowered loose clusters on slender hairy peduncles 1′—1½′ in length; pistillate in pairs on rather stouter peduncles usually about 1′ long; calyx of the staminate flower disciform; petals oblong-ovate, rounded at apex, white, erect or slightly spreading, early deciduous. Fruit solitary or in pairs, on peduncles 1′—1½′ in length, oval or ellipsoid, dark blue, lustrous, about ⅓′ long, with acrid pulp; stone oval, compressed, narrowed at the ends, and prominently ribbed.

A tree, rarely more than 30° high, with a slender trunk gradually tapering upward from a swollen and much enlarged base, small spreading branches forming a narrow pyramidal or round-topped head, branchlets slightly villose when they first appear, soon glabrous, bright reddish brown in their first winter, becoming darker the following year, and numerous erect thick roots rising above the surface of the water. Winter-buds acute, dark red-brown, puberulous, and about ⅛′ long, the inner scales hoary-tomentose. Bark about 1′ thick, deeply furrowed, gray to very dark reddish brown.

Distribution. Small Pine-barren ponds of the coastal plain from North Carolina to central and eastern Florida, southern Alabama and Mississippi, and western Louisiana (near Lake Charles, Calcasieu Parish).

3. Nyssa ogeche Marsh. Ogeechee Lime. Sour Tupelo.

Leaves oblong, oval or obovate, acute, rounded or rarely obtuse, and apiculate at apex, gradually or abruptly cuneate or sometimes rounded at base, and entire, covered on the lower surface when they unfold with thick hoary tomentum and on the upper surface with short scattered pale hairs, and at maturity thick and firm, dark green, lustrous and slightly pilose above, pale below, 4′—6′ long and 2′—2½′ wide, with a stout midrib, 9 or 10 pairs of primary veins covered on the lower side with rufous pubescence or often nearly glabrous, and obscure reticulate veinlets; petioles stout, grooved, ½′—1′ in length. Flowers appearing in March and April; staminate in capitate clusters on slender hairy peduncles ½′ long, bibracteolate near the middle, and developed from the axils of the inner scales of the terminal bud, covered with long pale hairs on the outer surface of the short obscurely 5-toothed cup-shaped calyx and on the oblong petals rounded at apex; filaments longer than the petals; anthers oval and conspicuously tuberculate-roughened; pistillate solitary, /16′ long, on short stout woolly peduncles from the axils of bud-scales, and furnished at apex with 2 acute hairy bractlets; calyx coated, like the minute rounded spreading petals, with hoary tomentum; stamens included, with short filaments, and small mostly fertile anthers; style stout, exserted, reflexed from near the base. Fruit bright or dull red, on slender tomentose stems enlarged at apex and ½′—⅔′ long, ripening in July and August, and sometimes persistent on the branches until after the falling of the leaves, oblong or obovoid, 1′—1½′ in length, tipped with the thickened and pointed remnants of the style; flesh thick, juicy, very acid; stone oblong, compressed, narrowed at the ends, rounded at base, acute at apex, with walls produced into 10 or 12 broad thin papery white wings, about 1′ long, and 1 or rarely 2-seeded.

A tree, rarely 60°—70° high, with 1 or several stems occasionally 2° in diameter, spreading branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and slender branchlets coated when they first appear with rufous tomentum, light reddish brown or green tinged with red and puberulous during their first summer, turning gray or reddish brown in their first winter, and marked by large lunate or nearly triangular leaf-scars displaying the ends of 3 groups of fibro-vascular bundles; often a shrub, with numerous slender clustered diverging stems. Winter-buds obtuse, ⅛′ long, with ovate apiculate imbricated scales rounded on the back and clothed with thick hoary tomentum, those of the inner ranks becoming at maturity ovate-oblong or obovate, rounded at apex, bright red, and ½′—¾′ long. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, irregularly fissured, with a dark brown surface broken into thick appressed persistent plate-like scales. Wood light, soft, tough, not strong, white, with thin hardly distinguishable sapwood of about 10 layers of annual growth. A preserve with an agreeable subacid flavor, known as Ogeechee limes, is sometimes made from the fruit in Georgia and South Carolina. The flowers abound in nectar, and are much visited by bees.

Distribution. Deep often inundated river swamps or their borders; South Carolina in the neighborhood of the coast, through the valley of the lower Ogeechee River, Georgia; in northern and in western Florida to the mouth of the Choctawhatchee River (R. H. Harper), and in the valley of the lower Apalachicola River; rare and local.

4. Nyssa aquatica Marsh. Cotton Gum. Tupelo Gum.

Leaves oblong-ovate, acute or acuminate and often long-pointed at apex, cuneate, rounded, or subcordate at base, entire or remotely and irregularly angulate-toothed, the teeth often tipped with a long slender mucro, when they unfold light red and coated below and on the petioles with pale tomentum and pubescent above, especially on the broad thick midrib, and at maturity thick and firm, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, pale and more or less downy-pubescent on the lower surface, 5′—7′ long and 2′—4′ wide, with 10—12 pairs of primary veins forked near the margins and connected by conspicuous cross veins; petioles stout, grooved, hairy, enlarged at base, 1½′—2½′ in length. Flowers appearing in March and April on a long slender hairy peduncle from the axil of an inner scale of the terminal bud; staminate in dense capitate clusters, their peduncle furnished near the middle and occasionally at apex with long linear ciliate bractlets; calyx-tube cup-shaped, obscurely 5-toothed, one third as long as the oblong erect petals rounded at apex and much shorter than the stamens; pistillate solitary, surrounded by 2—4 strap-shaped scarious ciliate bractlets often ½′ long and more or less united below into an involucral cup; calyx-tube oblong and much longer than the ovate minute spreading petals; stamens included, with small mostly fertile anthers; style stout, tapering, reflexed above the middle, and revolute into a close coil. Fruit ripening early in the autumn, on slender drooping stalks 3′—4′ in length, oblong or slightly obovoid, crowned with the pointed remnants of the style, dark purple, marked by conspicuous scattered pale dots, and 1′ long, with thick tough skin and thin acid flesh; stone obovoid, rounded at the narrow apex, pointed at base, flattened, light brown or nearly white, and about 10-ridged, the ridges acute and wing-like, with thin separable margins, and sometimes united by short intermediate ridges.

A tree, 80°—100° high, with a trunk 3°—4° in diameter above the greatly enlarged tapering base, comparatively small spreading branches forming a narrow oblong or pyramidal head, stout pithy branchlets dark red and coated with pale tomentum when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous or nearly so, and in their first winter light or bright red-brown and marked by small scattered pale lenticels and by the conspicuous elevated nearly orbicular leaf-scars displaying the ends of 3 large fibro-vascular bundles, and thick corky roots. Winter-buds: terminal nearly globose, with broad ovate light chestnut-brown scales keeled on the back and rounded and apiculate at apex, those of the inner ranks accrescent and at maturity oblong-ovate or oblong-obovate, rounded at apex, 1′ or more long, and bright yellow; axillary minute, obtuse, nearly imbedded in the bark. Bark of the trunk about ¼′ thick, dark brown, longitudinally furrowed, and roughened on the surface by small scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, close-grained, difficult to split, light brown or often nearly white, with thick sapwood sometimes composed of more than 100 layers of annual growth; used in the manufacture of wooden-ware, broom-handles, and wooden shoes, and largely for fruit and vegetable boxes. The wood of the roots is sometimes employed instead of cork for the floats of nets.

Distribution. Deep swamps inundated during a part of every year; coast region of the Atlantic states from southeastern Virginia to northern Florida, through the Gulf states to the valley of the Nueces River, Texas, and through Arkansas and southern and southeastern Missouri to western Kentucky and Tennessee, and to the valley of the lower Wabash River, Illinois; of its greatest size in the Cypress-swamps of western Louisiana and eastern Texas.

LII. Cornaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, scaly buds, and alternate or opposite deciduous leaves, without stipules. Flowers perfect or polygamo-diœcious; calyx 4 or 5-toothed, petals 4 or 5; stamens inserted on the margin of the epigynous disk; anthers oblong; introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary 1 or 2-celled; ovule solitary, suspended from the interior angle of the apex of the cell, anatropous; micropyle superior. Fruit drupaceous, 1 or 2-seeded. Seed oblong-ovoid; seed-coat membranaceous; embryo in copious fleshy albumen; cotyledons foliaceous; radicle terete, turned toward the hilum.

The widely distributed Cornel family with ten genera, more numerous in temperate than in tropical regions, has arborescent representatives of the genus Cornus in North America.

1. Cornus L. Dogwood.

Trees and shrubs, with astringent bark, opposite or rarely alternate deciduous leaves conduplicate or involute in the bud. Flowers small, perfect, white, greenish white or yellow; calyx-tube minutely 4-toothed, the teeth valvate in the bud; disk pulvinate, depressed in the centre, or obsolete; petals 4, valvate in the bud, oblong-ovate, inserted on the margin of the disk; stamens 4, alternate with the petals; filaments slender, exserted; ovary 2-celled; style exserted, simple, columnar, crowned with a single capitate or truncate stigma; raphe dorsal. Fruit ovoid or oblong; flesh thin and succulent; nut bony or crustaceous, 2-celled, 2 or sometimes 1-seeded. Seed compressed; embryo straight or slightly incurved.

Cornus with nearly fifty species is widely distributed through the three continents of the northern hemisphere, and south of the equator is represented in Peru by a single species. Of the sixteen or seventeen species of the United States four are arborescent. Cornus is rich in tannic acid, and the bark and occasionally the leaves and unripe fruit are used as tonics, astringents, and febrifuges. Of exotic species, Cornus mas, L., is often planted in the eastern states as an ornamental tree, and its edible fruit is used in Europe in preserves and cordials. The wood of Cornus is hard, close-grained, and durable, and is used in turnery and for charcoal.

The generic name, from cornu, relates to the hardness of the wood produced by plants of this genus.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Species of the United States.

Flowers greenish, in a dense cymose head surrounded by a conspicuous corolla-like involucre of 4—6 white or rarely red scales, from terminal buds formed the previous summer; fruit ovoid, bright red, rarely yellow.

Heads of flower-buds inclosed by the involucre during the winter; involucral scales 4, obcordate or notched at apex; leaves ovate to elliptic.

1. C. florida (A, C).

Heads of flower-buds inclosed only at base by the involucre during the winter; involucral scales 4—6, oblong to obovate, usually acute at apex; leaves ovate or rarely obovate.

2. C. Nuttallii (B, G).

Flowers cream color, in a flat cymose head, without involucral scales, terminal on shoots of the year; fruit subglobose, white or dark blue.

Leaves opposite, scabrous above; fruit white.

3. C. asperifolia (A, C).

Leaves mostly alternate and clustered at the end of the branches, smooth above; fruit dark blue or rarely yellow.

4. C. alternifolia (A, C).

1. Cornus florida L. Flowering Dogwood.

Leaves ovate to elliptic or rarely slightly obovate, acute and often contracted into a slender point at apex, gradually narrowed at base, remotely and obscurely crenulate-toothed on the somewhat thickened margins, and mostly clustered at the end of the branches, when they unfold pale and pubescent below and puberulous above, and at maturity thick and firm, bright green and covered with minute appressed hairs on the upper surface, pale or sometimes almost white and more or less pubescent on the lower surface, 3′—6′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, with a prominent light-colored midrib deeply impressed above, and 5 or 6 pairs of primary veins connected by obscure reticulate veinlets; in the autumn turning bright scarlet on the upper surface, remaining pale on the lower surface; petioles grooved, ½′—¾′ in length. Flowers: head of flower-buds appearing during the summer between the upper pair of lateral leaf-buds, inclosed by 4 involucral scales remaining light brown and more or less covered with pale hairs during the winter, and borne on a stout club-shaped puberulous peduncle ¼′ long or less during the winter and becoming 1′—1½′ in length; involucral scales beginning to unfold, enlarge and grow white in early spring and when the flowers open in March at the south to May at the north, when the leaves are nearly fully grown, forming a flat corolla-like cup 3′—4′ in diameter, becoming at maturity obovoid, 1′—1½′ wide, gradually narrowed below the middle and notched at the rounded apex, reticulate-veined, pure white, pink, or rarely bright red, deciduous after the fading of the flowers; flowers in dense many-flowered cymose heads, in the axils of broad-ovate nearly triangular minutely apiculate glabrous light green deciduous bracts, ⅛′ in diameter; calyx terete, slightly urceolate, puberulous, obtusely 4-lobed, light green; corolla-lobes strap-shaped, rounded or acute at apex, slightly thickened on the margins, puberulous on the outer surface, reflexed after anthesis, green tipped with yellow; disk large and orange-colored; style crowned with a truncate stigma. Fruit ripening in October, ovoid, crowned with the remnants of the narrow persistent calyx and with the style, bright scarlet or rarely yellow (f. xanthocarpa Rehd.), lustrous, ½′ long and ¼′ broad, with thin mealy flesh, and a smooth thick-walled slightly grooved stone acute at the ends, and 1 or 2-seeded; seeds oblong, pale brown.

A bushy tree, rarely 40° high, with a short trunk 12′-18′ in diameter, slender spreading or upright branches, and divergent branchlets turning upward near the end, pale green or green tinged with red when they first appear, glabrous or slightly puberulous, bright red or yellow-green during their first winter and nearly surrounded by the narrow ring-like leaf-scars, later becoming light brown or gray tinged with red; frequently toward the northern limits of its range a much-branched shrub. Winter-buds formed in midsummer; the terminal covered by 2 opposite acute pointed scales rounded on the back and joined below for half their length, and accompanied by 2 pairs of lateral buds, each covered by a single scale, those of the lower pair shedding their scales in the autumn and remaining undeveloped. Bark of the trunk ⅛′—¼′ thick, with a dark red-brown surface divided into quadrangular or many-sided plate-like scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, brown sometimes changing to shades of green and red, with lighter colored sapwood of 30—40 layers of annual growth; largely used in turnery, for the bearings of machinery, the hubs of small wheels, barrel-hoops, the handles of tools, and occasionally for engravers’ blocks.

Distribution. Usually under the shade of taller trees in rich well-drained soil; southern Maine to southern Ontario, southern Michigan, southeastern Kansas and eastern Oklahoma, and southward to central Florida and the valley of the Brazos River, Texas; on the mountains of northern Mexico; comparatively rare at the north; one of the commonest and most generally distributed inhabitants of the deciduous-leaved forests of the middle and southern states, ranging from the coast nearly to the summits of the high Alleghany Mountains. Trees with rose-colored or with pink involucral scales occasionally occur (var. rubra André). A variety with pendulous branches is known in gardens (var. pendula Dipp.); the var. xanthocarpa near Oyster Bay, Nassau County, Long Island, New York, and at Saluda, Polk County, North Carolina.

Often planted as an ornament of parks and gardens in the eastern states.

2. Cornus Nuttallii Aud. Dogwood.

Leaves ovate or slightly obovate, acute and often contracted into a short point at the apex, cuneate at base, faintly crenulate-serrate, and generally clustered toward the end of the branches, when they unfold coated below with pale tomentum and puberulous above, and at maturity thin, bright green and slightly puberulous, with short appressed hairs on the upper surface, and woolly pubescent on the lower surface, 4′—5′ long and 1½′—3′ wide, with a prominent midrib impressed above, and about 5 pairs of slender primary veins connected by remote reticulate veinlets; in the autumn turning bright orange and scarlet before falling; petioles stout, grooved, pubescent, ½′—⅔′ in length, with a large clasping base. Flowers: head of flower-buds appearing during the summer between the upper pair of lateral leaf-buds, surrounded at base but not inclosed by the involucral scales during the winter, hemispheric, ½′ in diameter, usually nodding on a stout hairy peduncle ¾′—1′ long; involucral scales becoming when the flowers open 1½′—3′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, white or white tinged with pink, oblong to obovate or nearly orbicular, and acute, acuminate, or obtuse, entire and thickened at apex, puberulous on the outer surface, gradually narrowed below the middle and conspicuously 8-ribbed, the spreading ribs united by reticulate veinlets; flowers in dense cymose heads from the axils of minute acuminate scarious deciduous bracts; calyx terete, slightly urceolate, puberulous on the outer surface, yellow-green, or light purple, with dark red-purple lobes; petals strap-shaped, rounded at apex, spreading, somewhat puberulous on the outer surface, with thickened slightly inflexed margins, yellow-green; style crowned with a truncate stigma. Fruit ripening in October, in dense spherical heads of 30—40 drupes surrounded at base by a ring of abortive pendulous ovaries, ½′ long, ovoid, much flattened, crowned with the broad persistent calyx, bright red or orange-colored, with thin mealy flesh, and a thick-walled 1 or 2-seeded stone obtuse at the ends and scarcely grooved; seeds oblong, compressed, with a very thin pale papery coat.

A tree, 40°—60°, or exceptionally 100° high, with a trunk 1°—2° in diameter, small spreading branches forming an oblong conic or ultimately round-topped head, and slender light green branchlets coated while young with pale hairs, becoming glabrous or puberulous, dark reddish purple or sometimes green during their first winter and conspicuously marked by the elevated lunate leaf-scars, ultimately becoming light brown or brown tinged with red. Winter-buds formed in July; the terminal acute, ⅓′ long, covered by 2 narrow-ovate acute long-pointed puberulous light green opposite scales, accompanied by 2 pairs of lateral buds, each covered by a single scale, those of the lower pair shedding their scales in the autumn and remaining undeveloped, those of the upper pair clothed with pale hairs, especially toward the apex, their scales thickening, turning dark purple, lengthening in the spring with the inclosed shoot, finally becoming scarious and developing into small leaves, and in falling marking the base of the branchlets with ring-like scars. Bark of the trunk about ¼′ thick, brown tinged with red, and divided on the surface into small thin appressed scales. Wood heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, light brown tinged with red, with lighter colored sapwood of 30—40 layers of annual growth; used in cabinet-making, for mauls and the handles of tools.

Distribution. Usually in moist well-drained soil under the shade of coniferous forests; valley of the lower Fraser River and Vancouver Island, British Columbia, southward through western Washington and Oregon, on the coast ranges of California to the San Bernardino Mountains, and on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada; southward up to altitudes of 4000°—5000°, of its largest size near the shores of Puget Sound and in the Redwood-forests of northern California.

3. Cornus asperifolia Michx. Dogwood.

Leaves ovate or oblong, gradually or abruptly contracted at apex into a long slender point, gradually narrowed or rounded and cuneate at base, and slightly thickened on the undulate margins, coated with lustrous silvery tomentum when they unfold, and nearly fully grown when the flowers open from the middle of May in Texas to the middle of July at the north, and then dark green and roughened above by short rigid white hairs, and pale, often glaucous or rough-pubescent below, and at maturity thin, scabrous on the upper surface, pubescent or puberulous on the lower surface, 3′—4′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, with a thin midrib, and 4—6 pairs of slender primary veins parallel with their sides; petioles stout, grooved, pubescent, usually about ½′ in length. Flowers cream color, on slender pedicels, in loose broad or narrow often panicled pubescent cymes, on peduncles frequently 1′ in length; calyx oblong, cup-shaped, obscurely toothed, covered with fine silky white hairs; corolla-lobes narrow-oblong, acute, about ⅛′ long, and reflexed after the flowers open; style thickened at apex into a prominent stigma. Fruit ripening from the end of August until the end of October, in loose spreading red-stemmed clusters, subglobose, white, tipped with the remnants of the style, about ¼′ in diameter, with thin dry, bitter flesh, and a full and rounded stone broader than high, somewhat oblique, slightly grooved on the edge, and 1 or 2-seeded; seeds nearly ¼′ long, with a pale brown coat.

A tree, sometimes nearly 50° high, with a short trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, thin erect wand-like branches forming a narrow irregular rather open head, and slender branchlets marked by numerous small pale lenticels, light green and puberulous when they first appear, pale red, lustrous, and puberulous during their first winter, light reddish brown in their second year, and ultimately light gray-brown or gray; usually shrubby. Winter-buds acute, compressed, pubescent, sessile, or stalked, about ⅛′ long, with 2 pairs of opposite scales, the terminal bud nearly twice as large as the compressed lateral buds. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, and divided by shallow fissures into narrow interrupted ridges broken into small closely appressed dark red-brown scales. Wood close-grained, hard, pale brown, with thick cream-colored sapwood.

Distribution. Southwestern Ontario (Point Pelee and Pelee Island), southward through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi to western Florida (Gadsden and Levy Counties) and westward to southeastern South Dakota, southeastern Nebraska, central Kansas, northwestern Oklahoma (near Alva, Woods County) and western Texas (Kerr, Menard and Brown Counties); probably only arborescent on the rich bottom-lands of southern Arkansas and eastern Texas.

4. Cornus alternifolia L. Dogwood.

Leaves mostly alternate, clustered at the end of the branches, rarely opposite, oval or ovate, gradually contracted at apex into a long slender point, cuneate or occasionally somewhat rounded at base, obscurely crenulate-toothed on the slightly thickened and incurved margins, coated when they unfold on the lower surface with dense silvery white tomentum, and faintly tinged with red and pilose above, and at maturity thin, bright yellow-green, glabrous or sparsely pubescent on the upper surface, pale or sometimes nearly white and covered with appressed hairs on the lower surface, 3′—5′ long and 2½′—3½′ wide, with a broad orange-colored midrib slightly impressed above, and about 6 pairs of primary veins parallel with their sides; in the autumn turning yellow or yellow and scarlet; petioles slender, pubescent, grooved, 1½′—2′ in length, with an enlarged clasping base. Flowers cream color, opening from the beginning of May to the end of June on slender jointed pedicels ⅛′—¼′ long, in terminal flat puberulous many-flowered cymes 1½′—2½′ wide, mostly on lateral branchlets; calyx cup-shaped, obscurely toothed; corolla-lobes narrow, oblong, rounded at apex, ⅛′ long, reflexed after anthesis; style enlarged into a prominent stigma. Fruit in loose spreading red-stemmed clusters, ripening in October, subglobose, dark blue-black, or rarely yellow (f. ochrocarpa Rehd.), ⅓′ in diameter, tipped with the remnants of the style rising from the bottom of a small depression, with thin and bitter flesh; and an obovoid nutlet, pointed at base, gradually longitudinally many-grooved, thick-walled, and 1 or 2-seeded; seeds lunate, ¼′ long, with a thin membranaceous pale coat.

A flat-topped tree, rarely 25°—30° high, with a short trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, long slender alternate diverging horizontal branches, and numerous short upright slender branchlets pale orange-green or reddish brown when they first appear, mostly light green or sometimes brown tinged with green during their first winter, later turning darker green and marked by pale lunate leaf-scars and small scattered pale lenticels; often a shrub, with numerous stems. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, dark reddish brown, and smooth or divided by shallow longitudinal fissures into narrow ridges irregularly broken transversely. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, brown tinged with red, with thick lighter colored sapwood of 20—30 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Rich woodlands, the margins of the forest, and the borders of streams and swamps, in moist well-drained soil, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, westward along the valley of the St. Lawrence River to the northern shores of Lake Superior and to Minnesota, and southward through the northern states and along the Appalachian Mountains to North Carolina, up to altitudes of 3500°—4000°; in northern Alabama, southwestern Georgia, and western Florida (River Junction, Gadsden County, T. G. Harbison).

Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental plant in the eastern states.

Section 2. Gamopetalæ. Corolla of united petals (divided in Elliottia in Ericaceæ 0 in some species of Fraxinus in Oleaceæ).

A. Ovary superior (inferior in Vaccinium in Ericaceæ, partly inferior in Symplocaceæ, partly superior in Styraceæ).

LIII. Ericaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with scaly buds, and alternate simple leaves, without stipules. Flowers perfect, regular; calyx 4—5-lobed; corolla hypogynous, 5-lobed (of 4 petals in Elliottia), the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens hypogynous, mostly free from the corolla, as many, or twice as many as its lobes; anthers introrse, 2-celled, opening by terminal pores, often appendaged; ovary 4—10-celled (inferior in Vaccinium); styles terminal, simple, stigma terminal; ovules numerous, anatropous or amphitropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit capsular, drupaceous, or baccate. Seeds with fleshy or horny albumen, embryo small; cotyledons small and short.

The Heath family with seventy-one genera is widely distributed over the temperate and tropical parts of the earth’s surface. Of the twenty-one genera found in the United States seven have arborescent representatives.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Genera of the United States.

Ovary superior.

Corolla of 4 petals; flowers in erect racemose panicles; leaves deciduous.

1. Elliottia.

Corolla gamopetalous, 5-lobed.

Fruit capsular.

Capsule septicidal, the valves in opening separating from the persistent placentiferous axis; calyx-lobes imbricated in the bud; leaves persistent (sometimes deciduous).

Flowers in terminal clusters; corolla 5-lobed; inflorescence-buds conic, covered with closely imbricated scales; leaves revolute on the margins.

2. Rhododendron.

Flowers in axillary clusters; corolla saucer-shaped, with a short narrow tube and 10 pouches below the short limb, the anthers in the pouches in the bud: inflorescence-buds elongated, covered with loosely imbricated scales; leaves flat.

3. Kalmia.

Capsule loculicidal, the valves in opening bearing the partitions and separating from the persistent placentiferous axis; calyx-lobes valvate in the bud.

Capsule ovoid-pyramidal; flowers in terminal panicles of secund racemes; anther-cells opening longitudinally from the apex to the middle; leaves deciduous.

4. Oxydendrum.

Capsule oblong; flowers in axillary fascicles; anthers opening below the apex by 2 oblong pores; leaves persistent.

5. Lyonia.

Fruit drupaceous; flowers in terminal panicles; anthers bearing a pair of reflexed awns on the back, each cell opening at apex anteriorally by a terminal pore; leaves persistent.

6. Arbutus.

Ovary inferior; fruit baccate; flowers axillary, racemose or solitary; anther-cells terminating in tubular appendages and opening by terminal pores.

7. Vaccinium.

1. Elliottia Ell.

A glabrous tree or shrub, with slender terete branchlets, scaly buds, and fibrous roots. Leaves petiolate, oblong or oblong-obovate, acute at the ends or occasionally rounded at apex, entire, thin, dark green and glabrous above, pale and villose below, particularly on the thin yellow midrib and obscure forked veins; deciduous; petioles slender and flattened, with an abruptly enlarged base nearly covering the small axillary buds. Flowers perfect, on slender elongated pedicels, in erect terminal elongated racemose panicles, with minute acute scarious caducous bracts and bractlets; calyx short, tubular, puberulous, dark red-brown, 4-toothed, the broad apiculate teeth erose on the margins and imbricated in the bud; petals 4, imbricated in the bud, spatulate-linear, sessile; stamens 8, hypogynous, shorter than the petals, filaments broad, flattened; anthers oblong-ovoid, the cells callous-mucronate, free at the apex of the spreading lobes, opening from above downward; disk much thickened, fleshy; ovary sessile, subglobose, 4-lobed, 4-celled, concave at apex; style elongated, slender, gradually enlarged and club-shaped above and incurved at apex; stigma 3—5-lobed, smaller than the thickened end of the style; ovules numerous in each cell, attached on the inner angle of a tumid placenta, ascending, anatropous. Fruit unknown.

Elliottia with a single species is confined to the southern United States.

The genus is named in honor of Stephen Elliott (1771—1830), the distinguished botanist of South Carolina.

1. Elliottia racemosa Ell.

Leaves 3′—4′ long, 1′—1½′ wide; petioles ⅓′—½′ in length. Flowers about ½′ long, opening from the middle to the end of June, in clusters 7′—10′ in length.

A tree, 15°—20° high, with a trunk 4′—5′ in diameter, short ascending branches forming a pyramidal head, and erect branchlets light red-brown and pilose when they first appear, bright orange-brown, lustrous, and nearly glabrous during their first winter, and roughened by slightly raised oblong-obovate leaf-scars with conspicuous central fibro-vascular bundle-scars, becoming light brown slightly tinged with red during their second season and dark gray-brown the following year; or more frequently shrubby. Winter-buds: terminal broad-ovoid, acute, about ⅛′ long, with much thickened bright chestnut-brown shining scales conspicuously white-pubescent near the margins toward the apex; lateral buds smaller, ovoid, compressed, rounded or short-pointed at apex. Bark thin, smooth, pale gray.

Distribution. Sandy woods in a few isolated stations in the valley of the Savannah River, near Augusta, Richmond County, and in Burke and Bullock Counties, Georgia.

2. Rhododendron L.

Trees or shrubs, with scaly bark, terete branchlets, terminal buds formed in summer, and fibrous roots. Leaves usually clustered at the end of the branches, revolute and entire on the margin, persistent or deciduous. Flowers in terminal umbellate corymbs from buds with numerous caducous scales; calyx 5-parted or toothed, persistent under the fruit, corolla 5—10-lobed, deciduous; stamens 5 or 10, rarely more, more or less unequal, ultimately spreading; filaments subulate-filiform, pilose at the base; disk thick and fleshy, crenately lobed; ovary 5—10-celled; style slender, crowned with a capitate stigma and persistent on the fruit; ovules numerous in each cell, attached in many series to an axile 2-lipped placenta projected from the inner angle of the cell, anatropous. Fruit a woody many-seeded capsule. Seed scobiform; seed-coat loose, reticulate, produced at the ends beyond the nucleus into a short often laciniate appendage; embryo minute, cylindric, axile in fleshy albumen; cotyledons oblong, shorter than the radicle turned toward the hilum.

Rhododendron with some four or five hundred species occurs in eastern Thibet, on the Himalayas, in southwestern China, the Malay peninsula and Archipelago, New Guinea, northern China and Corea, Japan, the mountains of central Europe, on the Caucasus, and in eastern and western North America, the largest number of species being found in southwestern China and on the Himalayas. Of the twenty-three or twenty-four North American species one only is arborescent.

Rhododendron possesses astringent narcotic properties. It produces hard close-grained compact wood sometimes used in turnery and for fuel. Many of the species are cultivated in gardens for the beauty of their large and conspicuous flowers.

The generic name is from ῥόδον and δένδρον, the Rose-tree.

1. Rhododendron maximum L. Great Laurel. Rose Bay.

Leaves revolute in the bud, ovate-lanceolate or obovate-lanceolate, acute or short-pointed at apex, and narrowed, cuneate or rounded at base, when they unfold covered with a thick pale or ferrugineous tomentum of gland-tipped hairs, and at maturity glabrous, thick and coriaceous, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, usually pale or whitish on the lower surface, 4′—12′ long and 1½′—2½′ wide, with a broad pale midrib and obscure reticulate veinlets; persistent for two or three years; petioles stout, ridged above, rounded below, 1′—1½′ in length. Flowers: inflorescence-buds surrounded at first by several loose narrow leaf-like scales, and when fully grown in September cone-shaped, 1½′ long and ½′ broad, with many imbricated ovate scales rounded and contracted at apex into a long slender point, opening late in June after the shoots of the year from buds in the axils of upper leaves have reached their full length; flowers on slender pink pedicels covered with glandular white hairs and furnished at base with two linear scarious bractlets, from the axils of the scales of the inner ranks of the inflorescence-bud, in 16—24-flowered umbellate clusters 4′—5′ in diameter, with accrescent scarious resinous puberulous bracts, those of the outer ranks becoming 1′ long and ⅓′ wide, and shorter than the lanceolate bracts of the inner ranks contracted into a long slender point; calyx light green and puberulous, with rounded remote lobes; corolla prominently 5-angled or ridged in the bud, campanulate, gibbous on the posterior side, puberulous in the throat, light rose color, purplish, or white, 1′ long, cleft to the middle into 5 oval rounded lobes, with conspicuous central veins, the upper lobe marked on the inner face by a cluster of yellow-green spots, and furnished on the outer surface at the bottom of each sinus with a conspicuous dark red gland; stamens 8—12, white, inserted on the bright green disk; filaments enlarged and flattened at base, slightly bent inward above the middle, and bearded with stiff white hairs, the 4 or 5 short ones at the back of the flower for more than half their length and the others only near the base; ovary ovoid, green, coated with short glandular pale hairs, crowned with a long slender glabrous white declining style club-shaped and inflexed at apex, and terminating in a 5-rayed scarlet stigma. Fruit dark red-brown, ovoid, ½′ long, glandular-hispid, ripening and shedding its seeds in the autumn, the clusters of open capsules remaining on the branches until the following summer; seeds oblong, flattened, the coat prolonged at the ends into scarious fringed appendages.

A bushy tree, 30°—40° high, with a short crooked often prostrate trunk occasionally 10′—12′ in diameter, stout contorted branches forming a round head, and branchlets green tinged with red and covered with dark red or slightly ferrugineous glandular-hispid hairs when they first appear, dark green and glabrous in their first winter, gradually turning bright red-brown in their second year, and ultimately gray tinged with red, the thin bark separating on branches four or five years old into persistent scales; more often a broad shrub, with many divergent twisted stems 10°—12° high. Winter-buds: leaf-buds conic, dark green, axillary, or terminal on barren shoots, with many closely imbricated scales, those of the inner ranks accrescent, increasing in length from the outer to the inner, and at maturity 1½′ long, ¼′ wide, gradually narrowed at base, and terminating at apex in a long slender point, light green, glabrous, closely held against the shoot by a resinous exudation from the glandular hairs, and in falling marking the branchlet with numerous conspicuous narrow remote scars persistent for three or four years. Bark of the trunk about /16′ thick, light red-brown, broken on the surface into small thin appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, rather brittle, close-grained, light clear brown, with thin lighter colored sapwood; occasionally made into the handles of tools and used as a substitute for boxwood in engraving. A decoction of the leaves is occasionally employed in domestic practice in the treatment of rheumatism.

Distribution. Nova Scotia, Mt. Chocorua, New Hampshire, and southward in New England and eastern New York and along the Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia and westward to the northern shores of Lake Erie and to southeastern Ohio (Hocking and Fairfield Counties); rare at the north and an inhabitant of deep cold swamps in a few isolated stations; more abundant on the mountains of western Pennsylvania, becoming exceedingly common farther south and occupying the steep banks of streams up to altitudes of 3000°; of its largest size on the high mountains of eastern Tennessee and the Carolinas, and here often forming thickets hundreds of acres in extent.

Often cultivated as an ornament of parks and gardens in the United States, and in Europe, and one of the parents of a number of distinct and beautiful hybrids.

3. Kalmia L.

Trees or shrubs, with scaly bark, terete branchlets without a terminal bud, minute axillary leaf-buds, elongated axillary inflorescence-buds covered by imbricated scales, and fibrous roots. Leaves ovate-oblong or linear, short-petiolate, with flat entire margins, coriaceous, persistent or deciduous in one species. Flowers on slender pedicels bibracteolate at the base, from the axils of foliaceous coriaceous ovate or acute persistent bracts, in axillary umbels; calyx 5, rarely 6-parted, the divisions imbricated in the bud, persistent under the fruit; corolla 5, rarely 6-lobed, rose-colored, purple, or white, saucer-shaped, with a short tube and 10 pouches just below the 5 or 6-parted limb, the lobes ovate, acute, before anthesis prominently 10 or 12-ribbed from the pouches to the acute apex of the bud, the salient keel of the ribs running to the point of the lobes and to the sinuses; stamens 10, shorter than the corolla; filaments filiform; anthers oblong, each cell opening by a short apical oblong longitudinal pore, at first free in the bud, the filaments then erect, later received in the pouches of the corolla, the filaments becoming bent back by its enlargement and expansion, straightening elastically and incurving on the release of the anthers, and in straightening discharging the pollen-grains; disk prominently 10-lobed; ovary subglobose, 5-celled; style filiform, exserted, crowned with a capitate stigma; ovules numerous in each cell, inserted on a 2-lipped placenta, pendulous or spreading from near the top of the thin columella, few-ranked, anatropous. Fruit a woody many-seeded globose slightly 5-lobed 5-celled capsule, tardily septicidally 5-valved, the valves crustaceous, ultimately opening down the middle by a narrow slit and separating from the persistent placenta-bearing axis. Seeds oblong or subglobose, minute; seed-coat crustaceous or membranaceous; embryo in fleshy albumen, terete, near the hilum; radicle erect, rather shorter than the oblong cotyledons.

Kalmia with six species is North American and Cuban, one species occasionally becoming under favorable conditions a small tree.

The generic name is in honor of the Swedish traveler and botanist, Peter Kalm (1715—1779).

1. Kalmia latifolia L. Laurel. Mountain Laurel.

Leaves sometimes in pairs or in 3’s, conduplicate in the bud, each leaf in the bud inclosed by the one immediately below it, oblong or elliptic-lanceolate, acute or rounded and tipped at apex with a callous point, and gradually narrowed at base, rarely oval to oblong-obovate and rounded at ends (f. obtusata Rehd.), when they unfold slightly tinged with pink and covered with glandular white hairs, and at maturity thick and rigid, dark rather dull green above, light yellow-green below, 3′—4′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, with a broad yellow midrib and obscure immersed veins; beginning to fall during their second summer; petioles stout, terete or slightly flattened, about ⅔′ in length. Flowers opening from early in April in southern Mississippi to the 20th of June at the north; inflorescence-buds appearing in the autumn from the axils of upper leaves, beginning to lengthen with the first warm days of spring and usually developing 2 or several lateral branches, the whole forming a compound many-flowered corymb of numerous crowded fascicles more or less covered with dark scurfy scales, 4′—5′ in diameter, and overtopped at the flowering time by the leafy branches of the year; flowers nearly 1′ in diameter, on long slender red or green pedicels covered with glandular hairs, and furnished at base with 2 minute acute bractlets, developed from the axils of acute persistent bracts sometimes ⅓′ long; calyx divided nearly to the base into narrow acute thin green lobes; corolla white (f. alba Rehd.), rose-color, or deep pink (f. rubra Rehd.) viscid-pubescent, marked on the inner surface with a waving dark rose-colored line and with delicate purple penciling above the sacs, rarely with a broad purple or chocolate-colored band (f. fuscata Rehd.). Fruit ripening in September, crowned with the persistent style, /16′ in diameter, and covered with viscid hairs, remaining on the branches until the following year; seeds oblong, light brown, scattered by the opening of the valves.

A tree, rarely 30°—40° high, with a short crooked and contorted trunk sometimes 18′—20′ in diameter, stout forked divergent branches forming a round-topped compact head, and slender branchlets light green tinged with red and covered with soft white glandular-viscid hairs when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous, and in their first winter green tinged with red and very lustrous, turning bright red-brown during their second year and paler the following season, the bark then separating into large thin papery scales exposing the cinnamon-red inner bark, and marked with large deeply impressed leaf-scars showing near the centre a crowded cluster of fibro-vascular bundle-scars; more often a dense broad shrub 6°—10° high, with numerous crooked stems. Winter-buds formed before midsummer in the axils of the leaves just below those producing the inflorescence-buds, their inner scales accrescent, and at maturity often 1′ long and ½′ wide, ovate, acute, light green, covered with glandular white hairs, and in falling marking the base of the shoots with conspicuous broad scars. Bark of the trunk hardly more than /16′ thick, dark brown tinged with red, and divided by longitudinal furrows into narrow ridges separating into long narrow scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, rather brittle, close-grained, brown tinged with red, with slightly lighter colored sapwood; used for the handles of tools, in turnery, and for fuel.

Distribution. New Brunswick to the northern shores of Lake Erie and southward in the Atlantic coast region to Virginia and to southern Ohio, Martin and Crawford Counties, Indiana and central Tennessee, along the Appalachian Mountains and their foothills to Georgia, and from western Florida through Alabama to eastern and southern Mississippi and the valley of the Bogue Lusa River, Washington Parish, Louisiana; often growing in low moist ground near the margins of swamps or on dry slopes under the shade of deciduous-leaved trees, or on rich rocky hillsides; most abundant and often forming dense impenetrable thickets on the southern Appalachian Mountains up to altitudes of 3000°—4000°; usually shrubby, and only arborescent in a few secluded valleys between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghany Mountains of North and South Carolina; abundant and of large size along small streams in Liberty County, western Florida. The var. myrtifolia K. Koch with small lance-oblong leaves, and small compact clusters of small flowers, a compact dwarf shrub, and an old inhabitant of European gardens, is occasionally wild in Massachusetts; in an abnormal form (f. polypetala Rehd.) found in western Massachusetts the corolla is divided into 5 narrow petals.

Often cultivated as an ornament of parks and gardens in the eastern states, and in Europe.

4. Oxydendrum Dc.

A tree, with thick deeply furrowed bark, slender terete glabrous light red or brown branchlets, without a terminal bud, marked by elevated nearly triangular leaf-scars displaying a lunate row of crowded fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and numerous elevated oblong dark lenticels, acid foliage, and fibrous roots. Winter-buds axillary, minute, partly immersed in the bark, obtuse, covered with opposite broad-ovate dark red scales rounded at apex, those of the inner ranks accrescent. Leaves alternate, revolute in the bud, oblong or lanceolate, acute, gradually contracted at base into a long slender petiole, serrate with minute incurved callous teeth, penniveined, with a conspicuous bright yellow midrib and reticulate veinlets, thin and firm, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, pale and glaucous on the lower surface, glabrous or at first slightly puberulous, deciduous. Flowers on erect clavate pedicels coated with hoary pubescence and bibracteolate above the middle, with linear acute caducous bractlets, in puberulous panicles of secund racemes appearing in summer and terminal on axillary leading shoots of the year, the lower racemes in the axils of upper leaves; calyx free, divided nearly to the base, the divisions valvate in the bud, ovate-lanceolate, acute, pubescent or puberulous on the outer surface, persistent under the fruit; corolla hypogynous, cylindric to ovate-cylindric, white, puberulous, 5-lobed, the lobes minute, ovate, acute, reflexed; stamens 10, included; filaments subulate, broad, pilose, inserted on the very base of the corolla; anthers linear-oblong, narrower than the filaments, the cells opening from the apex to the middle; disk thin, obscurely 10-lobed; ovary broad-ovoid, pubescent, 5-celled; style columnar, thick, exserted, crowned with a simple stigma; ovules attached to an axile placenta rising from the base of the cell, ascending, amphitropous. Fruit a 5-celled ovoid-pyramidal many-seeded capsule crowned with the remnants of the persistent style, 5-lobed, puberulous, loculicidally 5-valved, the valves woody, separating from the central persistent placentiferous axis, many-seeded. Seeds ascending, elongated; seed-coat membranaceous, loose, reticulated, produced at the ends into long slender points; embryo minute, axile in fleshy albumen, cylindric; radicle terete, next the hilum.

The genus consists of a single species.

The generic name is from ὀξύς and δένδρον, in allusion to the acid foliage.

1. Oxydendrum arboreum DC. Sorrel-tree. Sour Wood.

Leaves when they unfold bronze-green, very lustrous and glabrous with the exception of a slight pubescence on the upper side of the midrib and a few scattered hairs on the under side of the midrib and on the petioles, and at maturity 5′—7′ long and 1½′—2½′ wide; turning bright scarlet in the autumn; petioles ⅔′ in length. Flowers opening late in July or early in August, ⅓′ long, in panicles 7′—8′ in length. Fruit ⅓′—½′ long, hanging in drooping clusters sometimes a foot in length, ripening in September, the empty capsules often persistent on the branches until late in the autumn; seeds about ⅛′ long, pale brown.

A tree, occasionally 50°—60° high, with a tall straight trunk 12′—20′ in diameter, slender spreading branches forming a narrow oblong round-topped head, and glabrous branchlets yellow-green and marked by orange-colored lenticels when they first appear, becoming in their first winter orange-colored to reddish brown. Winter-buds about /16′ long, their inner scales at maturity 1′ in length, ⅛′ wide, spatulate, acute at apex, and slightly puberulous on the inner surface and on the margins. Bark of the trunk ⅔′—1′ thick, gray tinged with red and divided by longitudinal furrows into broad rounded ridges covered with small thick appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, brown tinged with red, with lighter colored sapwood of 80—90 layers of annual growth; sometimes used locally for the handles of tools and the bearings of machinery. The leaves have a pleasant acidulous taste, and are reputed to be tonic, refrigerant, and diuretic, and are occasionally used in domestic practice in the treatment of fevers.

Distribution. Well-drained gravelly soil on ridges rising above the banks of streams; coast of Virginia (Norfolk County) to that of North Carolina (near Newbern, Craven County), southwestern Pennsylvania to southern Ohio and Indiana (Perry County), and to western Kentucky and Tennessee, along the Appalachian Mountains and their foothills, and southward to western Florida, the shores of Mobile Bay, the coast region of Mississippi, and West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana; up to altitudes of 3500° on the southern mountains; of its largest size on the western slopes of the Big Smoky Mountains, Tennessee.

Often cultivated as an ornamental plant in the eastern states and hardy as far north as eastern Massachusetts, and occasionally in western and central Europe.

5. Lyonia Nutt.

Trees or shrubs, with slender terete branchlets, and fibrous roots. Leaves petiolate, thin or coriaceous. Flowers on slender pedicels from the axils of ovate acute bracts, in axillary and terminal umbellate fascicles or panicled racemes; calyx persistent, 4—5-toothed or parted, the divisions valvate in the bud; corolla globular, 4 or 5-toothed or lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens 8—10, included; filaments flat, incurved, usually slightly adnate to the base of the corolla, dilated and bearded at base, geniculate; anthers oblong, the cells opening below the apex by large oblong pores; disk 10-lobed; ovary 5-celled, depressed in the centre; style columnar, stigmatic at apex; ovules attached to a placenta borne near the summit of the axis, anatropous. Fruit ovoid, many-seeded, loculicidally 5-valved, the valves septiferous and separating from the placentiferous axis, 5-ribbed by the thickening of the valves at the dorsal sutures, the ribs more or less separable in dehiscence. Seeds minute, pendulous, narrow-oblong; seed-coat loose, thin, reticulate, produced at the ends beyond the nucleus into short fringe-like wings; embryo axile in fleshy albumen, cylindric elongated; cotyledons much shorter than the terete radicle turned toward the hilum.

Lyonia with about twenty species is confined to North America, the West Indies, and Mexico. Of the four or five species which occur in the United States one is occasionally a small tree.

The genus is named in honor of John Lyon, an English gardener who made important collections of plants in the United States early in the nineteenth century.

1. Lyonia ferruginea Nutt.

Xolisma ferruginea Hell.

Leaves cuneate-obovate, rhombic-obovate or cuneate-oblong, acute or rounded at apex, usually tipped with a cartilaginous mucro, gradually narrowed at base, and entire, with thickened revolute margins, scurfy when they unfold, and at maturity thick and firm, pale green, smooth and shining or sometimes obscurely lepidote above, covered below with ferrugineous or pale scales, 1′—3′ long and ¼′—1½′ wide, with a prominent midrib and primary veins; appearing in early spring and persistent until the summer or autumn of their second year; petioles short, thick, much enlarged at base. Flowers ⅛′ in diameter, chiefly produced on branches of the year or occasionally on those of the previous year, opening from February until April when the leaves are fully grown, on slender recurved pedicels much shorter than the leaves, in crowded axillary short-stemmed or sessile ferrugineous-lepidote fascicles, with minute acute deciduous bracts and bractlets; calyx 5-lobed, with acute lobes, covered on the outer surface with ferrugineous scales, and about one third as long as the white pubescent corolla, with short reflexed acute teeth slightly thickened and ciliate on the margins; filaments shortened by a conspicuous geniculate fold in the middle; ovary coated with thick white tomentum; style stout, as long or a little longer than the corolla. Fruit on a stout erect stem, oblong, 5-angled, ¼′ long; seed pale brown.

A tree, occasionally 20°—30° high, with a slender crooked or often prostrate trunk sometimes 10′ in diameter, thin rigid divergent branches forming a tall oblong irregular head, and slender branchlets coated when they first appear with minute ferrugineous scales and covered in their second year with glabrous or pubescent light or dark red-brown bark smooth or exfoliating in small thin scales. Winter-buds minute, acute, and covered with ferrugineous scales. Bark of the trunk ⅛′—¼′ thick, divided into long narrow ridges by shallow longitudinal furrows, reddish brown and separating into short thick scales. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained although not strong, light brown tinged with red, with thick lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. Hummocks and sandy woods; coast region of South Carolina and Georgia, northern Florida to the centre of the peninsula, the shores of Tampa Bay, and to the neighborhood of Apalachicola (Franklin County); in the United States arborescent in the rich soil of the woody hummocks rising in the sandy Pine-covered coast plain, and as a low shrub in the dry sandy sterile soil of Pine-barrens; in the West Indies and Mexico.

6. Arbutus L.

Trees or shrubs, with astringent bark exfoliating from young stems in large thin scales, smooth terete red branches, and thick hard roots. Leaves petiolate, entire or dentate, obscurely penniveined, persistent. Flowers on clavate pedicels bibracteolate at base from the axils of ovate bracts, in simple terminal compound racemes or panicles, with scarious scaly persistent bracts and bractlets; calyx free from the ovary, 5-parted nearly to the base, the divisions imbricated in the bud, ovate, acute, scarious, persistent; corolla ovoid-urceolate, white, 5-toothed, the teeth obtuse and recurved; stamens 10, shorter than the corolla; filaments subulate, dilated and pilose at base, free, inserted in the bottom of the corolla; anthers short, compressed laterally, dorsally 2-awned, the cells opening at the top internally by a terminal pore; ovary glandular-roughened, glabrous or tomentose, sessile or slightly immersed in the glandular 10-lobed disk, 5 or rarely 4-celled; style columnar, simple, exserted; stigma obscurely 5-lobed; ovules attached to a central placenta developed from the inner angle of each cell, amphitropous. Fruit drupaceous, globose, smooth or glandular-coated, 5-celled, many-seeded; flesh dry and mealy; stone cartilaginous, often incompletely developed. Seeds small, compressed or angled, narrowed and often apiculate at apex; seed-coat coriaceous, dark red-brown, slightly pilose; embryo axile in copious horny albumen, clavate; radicle terete, erect, turned toward the hilum.

Arbutus with ten or twelve species inhabits southern and western North America, Central America, western, southern and eastern Europe, Asia Minor, northern Africa, and the Canary Islands. Three species occur within the territory of the United States. Arbutus produces hard close-grained valuable wood often made into charcoal, used in the manufacture of gunpowder. The fruit possesses narcotic properties, and the bark and leaves are astringent.

Arbutus is the classical name of the species of southern Europe.

Conspectus of the Species Of the United States.

Bark of old trunks dark red-brown.

Ovary glabrous; leaves oval or oblong.

1. A. Menziesii (B, G).

Ovary pubescent; leaves oval, ovate, or lanceolate.

2. A. texana (C).

Bark of old trunks ashy gray; ovary glabrous, conspicuously porulose; leaves lanceolate or rarely narrow-oblong.

3. A. arizonica (H).

1. Arbutus Menziesii Pursh. Madroña.

Leaves oval or oblong, rounded or contracted into a short point at apex, and rounded, subcordate or cuneate at base, with slightly thickened revolute entire or occasionally on young plants sharply serrate margins, when they unfold light green or often pink, especially on the lower surface, and glabrous or slightly puberulous, and at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, pale or often nearly white below, 3′—5′ long and 1½′—3′ wide, with a thick pale midrib and conspicuously reticulated veinlets; persistent until the early summer of their second year and then turning orange and scarlet and falling gradually and irregularly; petioles stout, grooved, ½′—1′ in length, often slightly wing-margined toward the apex; often producing late in summer a second crop of smaller leaves. Flowers about ⅓′ long, with a glabrous ovary, appearing from March to May on short slender puberulous pedicels from the axils of acute scarious bracts ciliate on the margins, in spicate pubescent racemes forming a cluster 5′—6′ long and broad. Fruit ripening in the autumn, subglobose or occasionally obovoid or oval, ½′ long, bright orange-red, with thin glandular flesh and a 5-celled more or less perfectly developed thin-walled cartilaginous stone; seeds several in each cell, tightly pressed together and angled, dark brown and pilose.

A tree, 80°—125° high, with a tall straight trunk 4°—5° in diameter, stout upright or spreading branches forming a narrow oblong or broad round-topped head, and slender branchlets light red, pea-green, or orange-colored and glabrous when they first appear, or on vigorous young plants sometimes covered with pale scattered deciduous hairs, becoming in their first winter bright reddish brown. Winter-buds obtuse, ⅓′ long, with numerous imbricated broadly-ovate bright brown scales keeled on the back, apiculate at apex, and slightly ciliate. Bark of young stems and of the branches smooth, bright red, separating into large thin scales, becoming on old trunks ⅓′—½′ thick, dark reddish brown, and covered with small thick plate-like scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, light brown shaded with red, with thin lighter colored sapwood of 8—12 layers of annual growth; used for furniture and largely for charcoal. The bark is sometimes employed in tanning leather.

Distribution. High well-drained slopes usually in rich soil or occasionally in gravelly valleys; islands at Seymore Narrows, and southward through the coast region of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon; over the coast ranges of northern California, extending east to Mt. Shasta and south along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada from altitudes of 2500°—4000° to Placer County; on many of the coast ranges south of San Francisco Bay to the mountains of southern California; common and of its largest size in the Redwood-forests of northwestern California; much smaller north of California; rare on the Sierra Nevada and southward except on the Santa Cruz Mountains, and often shrubby in habit.

Occasionally cultivated in the gardens of western and southern Europe.

2. Arbutus texana Buckl. Madroña.

Arbutus xalapensis S. Watson, not H. B. K.

Leaves oval, ovate, or lanceolate, rounded, acute and often apiculate at apex, and rounded or cuneate at base, with slightly thickened usually entire or remotely crenulate-toothed or coarsely serrate margins, often tinged with red when they unfold and pubescent below, and at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark green and glabrous on the upper surface, pale and usually slightly pubescent on the lower surface, 1′—3′ long and ⅔′—1½′ wide, with a thick midrib often villose-pubescent below; petioles stout, pubescent, sometimes becoming nearly glabrous, 1′—1½′ in length. Flowers ¼′ long, with ciliate calyx-lobes and a pubescent ovary, appearing in March on stout recurved hoary-tomentose club-shaped pedicels from the axils of ovate acute hoary-tomentose often persistent bracts, in compact conic hoary-tomentose panicles 2½′ long. Fruit pubescent until half grown, becoming glabrous, usually produced very sparingly, ripening in summer, dark red, ⅓′ in diameter, with thin granular flesh and a rather thick more or less completely formed stone; seeds numerous in each cell, compressed, puberulous.

A tree, in Texas rarely more than 18°—20° high, with a short often crooked trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, separating a foot or two above the ground into several stout spreading branches, and branchlets light red and thickly coated with pubescence when they first appear, becoming dark red-brown and covered with small plate-like scales; often a broad irregularly shaped bush, with numerous contorted stems. Winter-buds about ⅛′ long, with hoary tomentose scales, the outer ovate, acute, the inner obovate and rounded at apex. Bark of young stems and of the branches thin, tinged with red, separating into large papery scales exposing the light red or flesh-colored inner bark, becoming at the base of old trunks sometimes ¼′ thick, deeply furrowed, dark reddish brown, and broken into thick square plates. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, brown tinged with red, with a lighter colored sapwood of 10—12 layers of annual growth; sometimes used in Texas for the handles of small tools and in the manufacture of mathematical instruments.

Distribution. Texas, dry limestone hills, Travis, Comal, Blanco, Kendall and Bandera Counties, on the Guadaloupe and Eagle Mountains, Culberson and El Paso Counties; southeastern New Mexico (Eddy County); on the mountains of Nuevo Leon in the neighborhood of Monterey.

3. Arbutus arizonica Sarg. Madroña.

Leaves lanceolate to rarely oblong, acute or rounded and apiculate at apex, and cuneate or occasionally rounded at base, with thickened entire or rarely denticulate margins, when they unfold, tinged with red, and slightly puberulous, especially on the petiole and margins, and at maturity thin, firm and rigid, light green on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, 1½′—3′ long and ½′—1′ wide, with a slender yellow midrib and obscure reticulate veinlets; appearing in May and after the summer rains in September, and persistent for at least a year; petioles slender, often 1′ in length. Flowers ¼′ long, with a corolla much contracted in the middle, and a glabrous porulose ovary, opening in May on short stout hairy pedicels from the axils of conspicuous ovate rounded scarious bracts, in rather loose clusters 2′—2½′ long and broad, their lower branches from the axils of upper leaves. Fruit ripening in October and November, globose or short-oblong, dark orange-red, granulate, ⅓′ in diameter, with thin sweetish flesh, and a papery usually incompletely developed stone; seeds compressed, puberulous.

A tree, 40°—50° high, with a tall straight trunk 18′—24′ in diameter, stout spreading branches forming a rather compact round-topped head, and thick tortuous divergent branchlets reddish brown and more or less pubescent or light purple, pilose, and covered with a glaucous bloom when they first appear, becoming bright red at the end of their first season, their bark thin, separating freely into thin more or less persistent scales. Winter-buds ⅓′ long, red, the two outer scales linear, acuminate a third longer than those of the next, rank, acute and apiculate and ridged on the back. Bark of young stems and of the branches thin, smooth, dark red, exfoliating in large thin scales, becoming on old trunks ⅓′—½′ thick, irregularly broken by longitudinal furrows and divided into square appressed plate-like light gray or nearly white scales faintly tinged with red on the surface. Wood heavy, close-grained, soft and brittle, light brown tinged with red, with lighter colored sapwood of 30—40 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Dry gravelly benches at altitude of 6000°—8000° on the Santa Catalina and Santa Rita Mountains, southern Arizona, and on the San Luis and Animas Mountains of southwestern New Mexico (Grant County); on the Sierra Nevada of Chihuahua.

7. Vaccinium L.

Shrubs or rarely small trees, with slender branchlets, and fibrous roots. Leaves thin or coriaceous, deciduous or persistent. Flowers small, on bibracteolate pedicels, in many-branched axillary racemes, or solitary, their bracts small or foliaceous; calyx-tube adnate to the ovary, 4—5-lobed, the lobes valvate in the bud, persistent; corolla epigynous, 4 or 5-toothed, the teeth imbricated in the bud, urceolate-campanulate; stamens 8—10, inserted on the base of the corolla under the thick obscurely lobed epigynous disk; filaments filiform, free, usually hirsute; anthers awned on the back, the cells produced upward into erect spreading tubes dehiscent by a terminal pore; ovary inferior, 4 or 5-celled, the cells sometimes imperfectly divided by the development from the back of a false partition; style filiform, erect; stigma minute; ovules attached to the interior angle of the cell by a 2-lipped placenta, anatropous. Fruit a berry crowned with the calyx-limb, 4 or 5 or imperfectly 8 or 10-celled, the cells many-seeded. Seed minute, compressed, ovoid or reniform; seed-coat crustaceous; embryo clavate, minute, surrounded by fleshy albumen, axile, erect; cotyledons ovate; radicle terete, turned toward the hilum.

Vaccinium with about one hundred species is distributed through the boreal and temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, and occurs within the tropics at high altitudes north and south of the equator. Of the twenty-five or thirty species which occur in North America one is small trees. The fruits of many of the species are edible, the most valuable being the North American Vaccinium macrocarpum L., the Cranberry.

Vaccinium is the classical name of one of the Old World species.

1. Vaccinium arboreum Marsh. Farkleberry. Sparkleberry.

Leaves obovate, oblong-oval or occasionally orbicular, acute, or rounded and apiculate at apex, gradually or abruptly cuneate at base, obscurely glandular-dentate or entire, with thickened slightly revolute margins, light red and more or less pilose or puberulous when they unfold, and at maturity coriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, paler below, glabrous or often puberulous on the midrib and veins, reticulate-venulose, ½′—2½′ long, ¼′—1′ wide, and sessile or short-petiolate; southward persistent for a year, northward deciduous during the winter. Flowers appearing from March to May on slender drooping pedicels ½′ long, bibracteolate near the middle, with 2 minute acute scarious caducous bractlets, solitary in the axils of leaves of the year or arranged in terminal puberulous racemes 2′—3′ long from the axils of leafy or minute acute scarious bracts; corolla white, open-campanulate, slightly 5-lobed, with acute reflexed lobes, longer than the 10 stamens; filaments hirsute; anther-cells opening by oblique elongated pores. Fruit ripening in October, sometimes persistent on the branches until the end of winter, globose, ¼′ in diameter, black and lustrous, with dry glandular slightly astringent flesh of a pleasant flavor.

A tree, 20°—30° high, with a short often crooked trunk occasionally 8′—10′ in diameter, slender more or less contorted branches forming an irregular round-topped head, and slender branchlets light red and covered with pale pubescence when they first appear, glabrous or puberulous and bright red-brown in their first winter, later becoming dark red and marked by minute elevated nearly orbicular leaf-scars; or northward generally reduced to a low shrub, with numerous divergent stems. Winter-buds obtuse, nearly /16′ long, with imbricated ovate acute chestnut-brown scales often persistent on the base of the branchlet throughout the season. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, light brown tinged with red, with thick hardly distinguishable sapwood; sometimes used for the handles of tools and in the manufacture of other small articles. Decoctions of the astringent bark of the root and of the leaves are sometimes employed domestically in the treatment of diarrhœa. The bark has been used by tanners.

Distribution. Usually in moist sandy soil along the banks of ponds and streams; southeastern Virginia and North Carolina, from the coast to the valleys of the high Appalachian Mountains, southward to the valley of the Caloosahatchie River, Florida, through the Gulf states to the shores of Matagorda Bay, Texas, and through eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri to southern Illinois, and the bluffs of White River, near Shoals, Martin County, and near Elizabeth, Harrison County, Indiana; common in the maritime Pinebelt of the south Atlantic and Gulf states, and of its largest size near the coast of eastern Texas; in the interior less abundant and usually of small size. Passing into

Vaccinium arboreum var. glaucescens Sarg.

Batodendron glaucescens Greene

Differing in its glaucescent, pubescent or glabrous leaves, in its usually larger leaf-like bracts of the inflorescence and often in its globose-campanulate corolla.

A tree, 10°—20° high, with a short often crooked trunk, pubescent or glabrous gray branchlets, and winter-buds and bark like those of Vaccinium arboreum with which it often grows.

Distribution. Tunnel Hill, Johnson County, Illinois, southern Missouri to eastern Oklahoma (Sapulpa, Creek County) and through Arkansas to western Louisiana (near Shreveport, Rapides Parish) and eastern Texas to Milam County.

LIV. Theophrastaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and entire coriaceous persistent leaves. Flowers perfect, regular; calyx campanulate, with 5 sepals imbricated in the bud; corolla 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud, with 5 staminodia attached below the sinuses; stamens 5, attached to the base of the corolla-tube, opposite the lobes; ovary 1-celled, with a simple style and a slightly 5-lobed stigma; ovules peltate, numerous, attached to a central fleshy placenta, amphitropous. Fruit baccate, many-seeded. Seeds immersed in the thickened placenta filling the cavity of the fruit; seed-coat membranaceous; embryo surrounded by thick cartilaginous albumen.

A tropical American family of four genera with one species reaching the shores of southern Florida.

1. Jacquinia Jacq.

Trees or shrubs, with terete or slightly many-angled branchlets, without a terminal bud, and fibrous roots. Leaves often punctate with pellucid dark glands. Flowers on slender ebracteolate pedicels from the axils of minute ovate acute persistent bracts, in terminal or axillary clusters; calyx slightly ciliate on the margins, rounded at apex, persistent under the fruit; corolla hypogynous, the lobes obtuse and spreading, furnished with 5 petal-like ovate obtuse spreading staminodia; stamens inserted on the corolla opposite its lobes near the base of the short tube; filaments flattened, broad at base; anthers oblong or ovoid, attached on the back above the base, extrorse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary ovoid. Fruit ovoid or subglobose, crowned by the remnants of the persistent style, with a thin crustaceous outer coat, inclosing the thick enlarged mucilaginous placenta. Seeds oblong; seed-coat punctate; embryo eccentric; cotyledons ovate, shorter than the elongated inferior radicle turned toward the broad ventral hilum.

Jacquinia with five or six species is confined to tropical America, with one species reaching southern Florida.

The generic name is in honor of Nicholas Joseph Jacquin (1728—1818), the distinguished Austrian botanist.

1. Jacquinia keyensis Metz. Joe Wood. Sea Myrtle.

Leaves subverticillate, alternate or sometimes opposite, crowded near the end of the branches, cuneate-spatulate or oblong-obovate, rounded or emarginate or often apiculate at apex, gradually narrowed below, entire, with thickened slightly revolute margins, thick and coriaceous, yellow-green, nearly veinless, with a very obscure midrib, covered on the lower surface with pale dots, 1′—3′ long and ¼′—1′ wide; persistent on the branches until the appearance of the new leaves the following year; petioles short, stout, abruptly enlarged at base. Flowers appearing in Florida from November until June, ⅓′ in diameter, pale yellow, fragrant, on slender club-shaped pedicels ½′ long from the axils of minute ovate coriaceous, reddish bracts slightly ciliate on the margins, in terminal and axillary many-flowered glabrous racemes 2′—3′ long; sepals ovate-orbicular, obtuse; corolla salverform, ⅖′ broad, the lobes longer than the tube; stamens shorter than the staminodia. Fruit ripening in the autumn, ⅓′ in diameter, orange-red when fully ripe; seeds light brown.

A tree, 12°—15° high, with a straight trunk 6′—7′ in diameter, stout rigid spreading branches forming a compact regular round-topped head, and slightly many-angled branchlets yellow-green or light orange-colored and coated with short soft pale ferrugineous pubescence when they first appear, terete, darker and sometimes reddish brown and marked in their second year by orbicular depressed conspicuous leaf-scars and by many scattered pale lenticels, becoming glabrous and red-brown or ashy gray the following season. Winter-buds axillary, minute, nearly globose, immersed in the bark. Bark of the trunk thin, smooth, blue-gray, and usually more or less marked by pale or nearly white blotches. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, rich brown, beautifully marked by darker medullary rays.

Distribution. Florida, dry coral soil in the immediate neighborhood of the shore, Gasparilla Island, on the west coast to the southern keys, and to the borders of the Everglades; rare but most abundant and of its largest size in Florida on the Marquesas Keys; on the Bahama Islands and in Cuba and Jamaica.

LV. Myrsinaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, alternate entire coriaceous punctate leaves, without stipules. Flowers regular, perfect or dimorphous; calyx persistent under the fruit; corolla, without staminodia, glandular-punctate; stamens inserted on the corolla, as many as and opposite its lobes; ovary 1-celled, with an undivided style and a minute terminal stigma; ovules peltate, immersed in the fleshy central placenta, amphitropous. Fruit a drupe. Seed solitary, globose, with copious cartilaginous or corneous albumen; seed-coat membranaceous.

A tropical family of thirty genera, with two arborescent species reaching the shores of southern Florida.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Genera of the United States.

Flowers perfect in terminal panicles; anthers on short broad filaments; style elongated.

1. Ardisia.

Flowers dimorphous in small axillary clusters; anthers sessile; stigma sessile or in one form of the staminate flower terminal on a slender style.

2. Rapanea.

1. Ardisia Sw.

Glabrous trees or shrubs, with leaves punctate below with immersed resinous dots. Flowers resinous-punctate, pedicellate, the pedicels bibracteolate at base or ebracteolate, in terminal or rarely axillary branched panicles, with minute scarious deciduous or caducous bracts and bractlets; calyx free, 5 or rarely 4-lobed or parted, the divisions contorted or imbricated in the bud; corolla 5 or rarely 4—6-parted, the divisions extrorsely or sinistrorsely contorted in the bud, short or elongated, white or rose color; stamens exserted; filaments short or nearly obsolete, free, inserted on the throat of the corolla; anthers usually sagittate-lanceolate, attached on the back just above the base, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally sometimes nearly to the base; ovary globose; ovules numerous, immersed in the globose resinous-punctate placenta. Fruit globose, with thin usually dry flesh and a 1-seeded stone with a usually crustaceous or bony shell. Seed concave or more or less lobed at base, resinous-punctate; hilum basilar, concave, conspicuous; embryo cylindric, transverse; cotyledons flat on the inner face, rounded on the back, shorter than the slender radicle.

Ardisia with about two hundred species inhabits tropical and subtropical regions of the two hemispheres. The genus has few useful properties, but a number of species are cultivated for the beauty of their handsome evergreen foliage and bright-colored fruits.

The generic name is from ἀρδις, in reference to the pointed anthers.

1. Ardisia paniculata Nutt. Marlberry. Cherry.

Icacorea paniculata Sudw.

Leaves ovate to oblong-lanceolate or lanceolate-obovate, acute or rounded at the narrow apex, cuneate and gradually contracted at base, entire, with thickened and slightly revolute margins, thick and coriaceous, glabrous, marked by minute scattered dark dots, dark yellow-green on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, 3′—6′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, with a broad midrib yellow and conspicuous on the under side, slender primary veins and reticulate veinlets; appearing in the summer or early autumn and falling before the appearance of the flowers the following year; petioles stout, grooved, ¼′—½′ in length. Flowers fragrant, usually opening in November or occasionally as early as July, ¼′ in diameter, on slender elongated pedicels without bractlets, from the axils of linear acute caducous bracts, in terminal rusty brown puberulous panicles 3′—4′ long and broad, their lower branches often from the axils of upper leaves; calyx ovoid, divided nearly to the base into 5 ovate acute lobes scarious and ciliate on the margins and marked on the back with dark lines; corolla 5-parted, with oblong rounded divisions sinistrorsely overlapping, or with 1 lobe wholly outside and 1 inside in the bud, conspicuously marked with red spots on the inner surface near the base, becoming reflexed; stamens, with short broad filaments, contracted by a geniculate fold in the middle, and large orange-colored anthers longer than the filaments, their cells opening almost to the base; ovary globose, glandular, gradually contracted into a long slender style ending in a simple stigma. Fruit ripening in early spring, globose, ¼′ in diameter, tipped with the remnants of the style, and roughened by resinous glands, dark brown at first when fully grown, ultimately becoming black and lustrous; stone brown, thin-walled, crustaceous; seed conspicuously lobed at base, bright red-brown, about ⅛′ in diameter.

A slender tree, in Florida rarely more than 20° high, with a short trunk 4′—5′ in diameter, numerous thin upright branches forming a narrow head, and stout terete often contorted branchlets, rusty brown or dark orange-colored and slightly puberulous when they first appear, becoming in their second year dark brown or ashy gray, and marked by many minute circular lenticels and by thin nearly orbicular flat leaf-scars displaying in the centre a group of fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds rusty brown; terminal slender, acuminate, ⅛′—¼′ long; axillary globose, minute, nearly immersed in the bark. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, light gray or nearly white, roughened by minute lenticels, and separating into large thin papery plates. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, rich brown beautifully marked by darker medullary rays, with thick lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, from Mosquito Inlet to the southern keys on the east coast, and from the shores of the Caloosahatchee River to Cape Romano on the west coast; usually a shrub, occasionally arborescent on the shores of Bay Biscayne and on some of the southern keys; on the Bahama Islands, in Cuba, and southern Mexico.

2. Rapanea Aubl.

Trees or shrubs, with watery juices and terete branchlets. Leaves alternate, entire or rarely dentate, usually distinctly lepidote, persistent, without stipules. Flowers perfect or unisexual by abortion, minute, 4 or 5, or rarely 6 or 7-merous, sessile or pedicellate, in small axillary sessile or pedunculate fascicles, their bracts deciduous; calyx free, persistent, the sepals imbricate-valvate in the bud, ciliate, usually glandular-punctate; corolla hypogynous, the lobes more or less connate at base, ovate or elliptic, spreading or recurved, glandular-punctate, papillate on the margins, imbricate or rarely convolute in the bud; stamens inserted on the base of the corolla opposite its lobes; filaments 0; anthers short, connate to the corolla, acuminate and papillate at apex, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary globose or ellipsoidal, 1-celled; stigma capitate, irregularly lobed; ovules few, peltate, immersed in one series near the middle of the free fleshy globose placenta. Fruit dry or fleshy, seed filling the cavity of the fruit, globose, intruded at base; testa thin; albumen copious, corneous, rarely slightly ruminate; embryo cylindric, elongated, transverse, usually curved; cotyledons small, radicle elongated.

Rapanea, with nearly one hundred and fifty species, is widely distributed through the tropical and subtropical regions of the two hemispheres, one species reaching southern Florida.

The generic name is formed from the native name of Rapanea guianensis in British Guiana.

1. Rapanea guianensis Aubl.

Leaves crowded at the end of the branches, oblong-obovate, obtuse or retuse at apex, gradually narrowed and contracted at base, coriaceous, bright green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 2¾′—3½′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, with thickened revolute margins, a thick midrib and obscure veins; petioles stout, narrowly wing-margined, ¼′—⅓′ in length. Flowers in November, minute, short-pedicellate in short pedunculate clusters usually 5, rarely 4-merous, white more or less marked with purple, about ⅙′ in diameter; calyx divided to the middle, the lobes broad-ovate, acute or rounded at apex, slightly ciliate, persistent under the fruit; corolla 2 or 3 times longer than the calyx, the lobes spreading, narrowed and rounded at apex, slightly ciliate on the margins; staminate flowers dimorphous; anthers sagittate-apiculate, inserted below the middle of the petals; ovary in one form crowned by a minute discoid sessile stigma and probably abortive, in the other form gradually narrowed into a slender style, terminating in an oblique stigma and fertile; pistillate flowers, anthers smaller and rudimentary; ovary crowned by a large nearly sessile irregularly lobed papillate stigma deciduous from the fruit. Fruit in clusters crowded on the elongated somewhat thickened spur-like peduncle of the flower-cluster covered with imbricated persistent bracts, dark blue or nearly black, tipped with the persistent style, ⅙′—⅕′ in diameter; exocarp thin and fleshy; endocarp crustaceous, white.

A tree, in Florida occasionally 18°—20° high, with a tall usually more or less crooked trunk 2′—3′ in diameter, small ascending branches forming an open irregular head, and slender gray or light red-brown branchlets roughened for a year or two by the persistent spur-like peduncles of the fallen fruit and later marked by circular scars in the axils of the small transverse leaf-scars; more often a shrub. Bark of the trunk thin, close, pale gray.

Distribution. Florida, shores of Indian River on the east coast and Palmetto, Manatee County, on the west coast, southward to the southern keys; common; on the Bahama Islands, Cuba, Porto Rico, Jamaica and Trinidad, to southern Brazil, and to Mexico and Bolivia.

LVI. Sapotaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with milky juice. Leaves alternate, simple, entire, pinnately veined, mostly coriaceous, petiolate, without stipules. Flowers perfect, regular, small, in axillary clusters; calyx of 5-8 sepals imbricated in the bud, persistent under the fruit; corolla hypogynous, 5—8-cleft, the divisions imbricated in the bud, often with as many or twice as many internal appendages borne on its throat; disk 0; fertile stamens as many as and opposite the divisions of the corolla and inserted on its short tube, often with sterile filaments (staminodia) alternate with them; anthers generally extrorse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; pistil of united carpels; ovary sessile, usually 5-celled; style simple; ovules solitary in each cell, attached to an axile placenta, ascending, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle inferior. Fruit baccate, bearing at apex the remnant of the style, usually 1-celled and 1-seeded. Seed with or without albumen; embryo large; radicle terete, inferior.

This family with fifty genera is chiefly tropical and subtropical, with only Bumelia extending in North America into temperate regions. Some of the species produce valuable timber or edible and agreeable fruits. From Palaquium gutta Burkh., of the Malay Peninsula, gutta-percha is obtained. Five genera are represented by trees in the flora of the United States.

Conspectus of the Genera of the United States.

Calyx of 5 sepals in a single series.

Staminodia 1 in each sinus of the corolla.

Appendages of the corolla 0; staminodia slender, scale-like.

1. Sideroxylum.

Appendages of the corolla present; staminodia petaloid.

Staminodia linear, fimbriate; seeds, with copious albumen.

2. Dipholis.

Staminodia petaloid, entire or denticulate; seeds, without albumen.

3. Bumelia.

Staminodia and appendages of the corolla 0; leaves covered below with lustrous copper-colored or golden pubescence.

4. Chrysophyllum.

Calyx of 6—8 sepals in 2 series; corolla 6—8-lobed, with 2 appendages in each sinus inside of a scale-like or petaloid staminodia.

5. Mimusops.

1. Sideroxylum L.

Trees, with terete branchlets, naked buds, and long-petiolate persistent leaves, the veins remote and connected by reticulate veinlets. Flowers minute, on ebracteolate pedicels from the axils of minute deciduous bracts, in crowded many-flowered axillary fascicles; calyx 5-parted, the divisions in one series, nearly equal, corolla furnished with 5 or 6 staminodia, and 5 or rarely 6-lobed; filaments slender, elongated, bent outward at the apex; anthers oblong, the cells at first extrorse, sometimes becoming sublateral; staminodia linear, scale-like; ovary contracted into a subulate style tipped with a minute slightly 5-lobed stigma. Fruit dry, 1-seeded, oblong, with thin coriaceous flesh. Seed obovoid or oblong; seed-coat lustrous, light brown, folded on the inner face into 2 obscure lobes rounded at apex; hilum elevated, subbasilar or lateral, oblong or linear; embryo erect in thick fleshy albumen; radicle much shorter than the oblong fleshy cotyledons.

Sideroxylum with a hundred species is widely distributed through the tropics of the two hemispheres, and occurs also with a few species in Australia, Madeira, southern Africa, New Zealand, and Norfolk Island, a single species reaching the shores of southern Florida. Some of the species are large and valuable timber-trees, producing hard handsome durable wood.

The generic name, from σίδηρος and ξύλον, is in reference to the hardness of the wood.

1. Sideroxylum fœtidissimum Jacq. Mastic.

Sideroxylum Mastichodendron Jacq.

Leaves mostly clustered near the end of the branches, appearing irregularly from early spring until autumn, oval, acute or rounded and slightly emarginate at apex, and gradually narrowed at base, with thickened cartilaginous slightly involute margins, silky-canescent beneath when they unfold, and at maturity thin and firm, glabrous, bright green and lustrous above, lustrous and yellow-green below, 3′—5′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, with a broad pale conspicuous midrib deeply impressed on the upper side and inconspicuous primary veins arcuate near the margins; petioles slender, 1′—1½′ in length. Flowers usually appearing in Florida in the autumn and also in early spring and during the summer on stout orange-colored puberulous pedicels from the axils of minute acute scarious bracts usually deciduous before the opening of the flower-buds, from the axils of young leaves or on the branches of the previous year from leafless nodes; calyx yellow-green, puberulous on the outer surface and deeply divided into broad-ovate rounded lobes rather shorter than the oblong-ovate rounded divisions of the light yellow corolla; staminodia lanceolate, nearly entire, tipped with a subulate point and much shorter than the stamens; ovary oblong-ovoid, glabrous, gradually contracted into an elongated style stigmatic at apex. Fruit ripening in March and April on a much thickened woody stem erect or nearly at right angles to the branch, 1′ long, separating from the calyx in falling, with tough yellow skin, and thick juicy flesh of a pleasant subacid flavor; seed obovoid, rounded above, narrowed at base, ½′ long and ⅓′ wide.

A tree, in Florida 60°—70° high, with a massive straight trunk 3°—4° in diameter, stout upright branches forming a dense irregular head, and thick terete branchlets orange-colored and slightly puberulous when they first appear, becoming glabrous, brown more or less tinged with red, and marked by the conspicuous nearly orbicular leaf-scars displaying 3 large fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and conspicuously roughened by the thickened persistent bases of the fruit stalks. Bark of the trunk ⅓′—½′ thick, dark gray to light brown tinged with red and broken into thick plate-like scales separating into thin layers. Wood heavy, hard, strong, bright orange-colored, with thick yellow sapwood of 40—50 layers of annual growth; in Florida used in boat-building.

Distribution. Florida, Cape Canaveral and Cape Romano to the southern keys; on the Bahama Islands and many of the Antilles.

2. Dipholis A. Dc.

Trees or shrubs, with naked buds, and persistent leaves, the slender veins arcuate and united near the margins. Flowers minute, on clavate ebracteolate pedicels from the axils of minute deciduous bracts, in the axils of existing leaves or from the leafless nodes of previous years; calyx ovoid, deeply 5-lobed, the lobes nearly equal, ovate, rounded at apex; corolla campanulate, white, 5-lobed, the spreading lobes furnished on each side at the base with a linear or subulate appendage; stamens exserted; filaments filiform; anthers oblong-sagittate, extrorse; staminodia 5, petaloid, ovate, acute, fimbriately cut on the margins, oblique, keeled on the back, inserted in the same rank and alternate with the stamens; ovary oblong or narrow-ovoid, gradually contracted into a slender style shorter than the corolla and stigmatic at the apiculate apex. Fruit oblong-ovoid, with thin dry flesh. Seed ovoid; seed-coat thick, coriaceous and lustrous; hilum oblong, basilar or slightly lateral; embryo erect in thick fleshy albumen; cotyledons ovate, flat, much longer than the short radicle turned toward the hilum.

Dipholis with three species is confined to the West Indies and southern Florida.

The generic name, from δίς and φολίς, relates to the appendages of the corolla.

1. Dipholis salicifolia A. DC. Bustic. Cassada.