Division II. Dicotyledons (part 8)

Leaves oblong-lanceolate or narrow-obovate, acute, acuminate, or rounded at apex, gradually contracted at base, with slightly thickened cartilaginous wavy margins, thickly coated when they unfold with lustrous rufous pubescence, and at maturity thin and firm, dark green and lustrous above, pale yellow-green below, 3′—5′ long, ½′—1½′ wide, and glabrous, or slightly puberulous on the lower side of the narrow pale midrib, with inconspicuous veins and reticulate veinlets; appearing in Florida in the spring and remaining on the branches between one and two years; petioles slender, ½′—1′ in length. Flowers opening during March and April, ⅛′ long, on thick pedicels ¼′ in length from the axils of minute ovate acute scarious bracts, and coated with rufous pubescence, in dense many-flowered fascicles crowded on branchlets of the year or of the previous year for a distance of 8′—12′; calyx half the length of the corolla, coated on the outer surface with rusty silky pubescence; appendages of the corolla as long as the oval acute irregularly toothed staminodia; ovary narrow-ovoid, glabrous, gradually contracted into a slender style shorter than the corolla and stigmatic at apex. Fruit solitary or rarely clustered, ripening in the autumn, short-oblong to subglobose, black, ¼′ in length; seed pale brown, about /16′ in length.

A tree, in Florida sometimes 40°—50° high, with a straight trunk 18′—20′ in diameter, small upright branches forming a narrow graceful head, and slender branchlets coated with rufous pubescence when they first appear, becoming ashy gray or light brown tinged with red and marked by numerous circular pale lenticels and by small elevated orbicular leaf-scars displaying near the centre a compact cluster of fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Bark of the trunk about ⅓′ thick and broken into thick square plate-like brown scales tinged with red. Wood very heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, dark brown or red, with thin sapwood of 4 or 5 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Florida, rich hummock soil, shores of Bay Biscayne and on the Everglade Keys, Dade County, and on several of the southern keys; on the Bahama Islands and on many of the Antilles.

3. Bumelia Sw.

Small trees or shrubs, with terete usually spinescent branchlets, scaly buds, and fibrous roots. Leaves often fascicled on spur-like lateral branchlets, conduplicate in the bud, coriaceous or thin, short-petiolate, obovate and obtuse or elliptic, silky-pubescent or tomentose below, or nearly glabrous, with rather inconspicuous veins arcuate near the entire margins and conspicuous reticulate veinlets, deciduous or persistent. Flowers minute, on slender clavate ebracteolate pedicels from the axils of lanceolate acute scarious deciduous bracts, in many-flowered crowded fascicles in the axils of existing leaves or from the leafless nodes of previous years; calyx ovoid to subcampanulate, 5-lobed, the lobes in one series, imbricated in the bud, ovate or oblong, rounded at apex, nearly equal; corolla campanulate, white, with 5 spreading broad-ovate lobes rounded at apex and furnished on each side at base with a minute acute ovate or lanceolate appendage; stamens 5; filaments filiform; anthers ovoid-sagittate, attached on the back below the middle, the cells opening by subextrorse slits; staminodia petal-like, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, entire or obscurely denticulate, flattened or keeled on the back, sometimes furnished at base with a pair of minute scales; ovary hirsute, ovoid to ovoid-conic, gradually or abruptly contracted into a slender short or elongated simple style stigmatic at the acute apex. Fruit oblong-obovoid or globose, black, solitary or in 2 or 3-fruited clusters; flesh thin and dry or succulent. Seed ovoid or oblong, apiculate or rounded at apex, without albumen; seed-coat thick, crustaceous, light brown, smooth and shining, folded more or less conspicuously on the back into 2 lobes rounded at apex; embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons thick and fleshy, hemispheric, usually consolidated; radicle short, turned toward the basilar or subbasilar orbicular or elliptic hilum.

Bumelia, with about twenty-five species is confined to the New World, where it is distributed from the southern United States through the West Indies to Mexico, Central America, and Brazil. Of the twelve species in the United States which have been distinguished five are small trees.

Bumelia produces hard heavy strong wood, that of the North American species containing bands of numerous large open ducts defining the layers of annual growth and connected by conspicuous branched groups of similar ducts, presenting in cross-section a reticulate appearance.

The generic name is from βουμελία, a classical name of the Ash-tree.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Species of the United States.

Lower surface of the leaves pubescent or lanuginose.

Leaves short-obovate to oblanceolate or elliptic, covered below with pale or ferrugineous silky pubescence.

1. B. tenax (C).

Leaves oblong-obovate, lanuginose below with ferrugineous or silvery white hairs.

2. B. lanuginosa (A, C, H).

Leaves glabrous or nearly so.

Leaves deciduous.

Leaves oblong-obovate, thick.

3. B. monticola.

Leaves elliptic to oblanceolate, usually acute or acuminate, thin.

4. B. lycioides (A, C).

Leaves persistent, obovate; fruit oblong.

5. B. angustifolia (C, D).

1. Bumelia tenax Willd. Ironwood. Black Haw.

Leaves oblong-obovate to oblanceolate or elliptic, rarely oval or ovate on leading shoots, rounded or acute at apex, cuneate at base, thin, dark dull green, and finally reticulate-venulose on the upper surface, thickly covered below with soft silky pale or gold-colored pubescence, usually becoming dark rusty brown by midsummer, 1′—3′ long and 1⅛′—1½′ wide, with slightly thickened and revolute margins and a prominent midrib; turning yellow and falling irregularly during the winter; petioles slender, hairy, grooved, ¼′—1′ in length. Flowers appearing from May in Florida to July in South Carolina, ⅛′ long, on pedicels ½′—1′ in length and coated like the calyx with rufous silky pubescence, in many-flowered crowded fascicles; calyx ovoid, with oblong lobes; appendages of the corolla large, ovate, acute, crenate, shorter than the ovate staminodia about as long as the lobes of the corolla; ovary narrow-ovoid, gradually contracted into an elongated style. Fruit ripening and falling in the autumn, short-oblong to ellipsoid, ⅓′—½′ in length; flesh sweet and edible; seed oblong, short-pointed at apex, ¼′—⅓′ long.

A tree, 20°—30° high, with a trunk occasionally 5′—6′ in diameter, straight spreading flexible tough branches unarmed or armed with straight stout rigid spines sometimes 1′ in length, and slender branchlets coated when they first appear with silky pale pubescence often tinged with red and soon rusty brown, becoming glabrous before winter, and then dark red and slightly roughened by occasional minute dark lenticels; or often a shrub only a few feet high. Winter-buds minute, subglobose, with imbricated ovate scales rounded at apex and clothed with rusty brown tomentum. Bark of the trunk thick, brown tinged with red, and divided irregularly by deep fissures into narrow flat reticulate ridges covered with minute appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, light brown streaked with white, with lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. Dry sandy soil; South Carolina (Saint Helena Island and Bluffton, Beaufort County), southward in the coast region of Georgia and east Florida to Cape Canaveral and through the interior of the peninsular to Cedar Keys on the west coast; near Bainbridge, Decatur County, southwestern Georgia.

2. Bumelia lanuginosa Pers. Gum Elastic. Chittam Wood.

Leaves oblong-obovate, rounded and often apiculate at apex and gradually narrowed at base, coated when they unfold with pale ferrugineous tomentum dense on the lower and loose on the upper surface, and at maturity thin and firm, dark green and lustrous above, more or less lanuginose below with rusty brown or silvery white (var. albicans Sarg.) hairs, 1′—2½′ long and ⅓′—¾′ wide; falling irregularly during the winter; petioles slender, rusty brown or pale pubescent, ⅛′—¾′ in length. Flowers opening in summer on hairy pedicels ⅛′ in length, in 16—18-flowered fascicles; calyx ovoid, with ovate rounded lobes coated on the outer surface with ferrugineous or pale tomentum and rather shorter than the tube of the corolla; appendages of the corolla small, ovate and acute; staminodia ovate, acute, remotely and slightly denticulate, as long as the corolla-lobes; ovary abruptly contracted into a slender elongated style. Fruit on a slender drooping stalk ripening and falling in the autumn, oblong or slightly obovoid, ½′ long, with thick flesh; seed short-oblong, rounded at apex, about ¼′ in length.

A tree, often 40°—50° high, with a tall straight trunk 1°—2° in diameter, short thick rigid branches forming a narrow-oblong round-topped head, unarmed, or armed with stout rigid straight or slightly curved spines frequently developing into spinescent leafy lateral branchlets, and slender often somewhat zigzag branchlets coated with thick rufous or pale tomentum when they first appear, becoming in their first winter red-brown to ashy gray and glabrous or nearly so, and marked by occasional minute lenticels and by small semiorbicular leaf-scars displaying 2 clusters of fibro-vascular bundle-scars; of its largest size in the Texas coast region; much smaller east of the Mississippi River, and there rarely more than 20° tall. Winter-buds obtuse, ⅛′ long, covered with broad-obovate rusty-tomentose scales. Bark of the trunk ½′ thick, dark gray-brown and usually divided into narrow ridges broken into thick appressed scales. Wood heavy, rather soft, not strong, close-grained, light brown or yellow, with thick lighter colored sapwood; producing in Texas considerable quantities of clear viscid gum from the freshly cut wood.

Distribution. Southern and southeastern Georgia, western Florida southward to the neighborhood of Lake City, Columbia County and to Cedar Key, coast of Alabama and inland to Dallas County, southern Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas to the valley of the San Antonio River and over the Edwards Plateau (Kendall, Kerr and Brown Counties) to the valley of the upper Brazos River (Palo Pinto County), and northward through western Louisiana and western Arkansas to western Oklahoma (Seiling, Dewey County), and to southeastern Kansas (Cherokee County) and southern Missouri as far north as the valley of the Meramec River (near Allenton, St. Louis County), and southern Illinois (near Mound City, Pulaski County); at Calcasieu Pass, on the sandy beaches of the Louisiana coast forming thickets of plants 6°—8° high, and uninjured by salt spray; the var. albicans in eastern Texas from the valley of the lower Brazos to that of the San Antonio River and in the neighborhood of Monterey, Nuevo Leon; most distinct and of its largest size on the bottoms of the Guadalupe River, near Victoria, Victoria County, and here occasionally 70°—80° high, with a trunk 3° in diameter.

Passing into the var. rigida A. Gray, with smaller rather narrower leaves and often more spinescent branches. Brown and Uvalde Counties, Texas; in Coahua and Nuevo Leon, and in the cañons of the mountains of southern Arizona up to altitudes of at least 4000°—5000°; in Texas shrubby in habit; in Arizona forming dense thickets of slender stems often 20°—25° tall and only 2′—3′ in diameter.

3. Bumelia monticola Buckl.

Leaves oblong-obovate, narrowed and acute or rounded and rarely slightly emarginate at apex, cuneate at base, entire, covered above with matted pale hairs and densely below with snow white pubescence when they unfold, and at maturity coriaceous, dark yellow-green, lustrous and glabrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 1¼′—3′ long and ⅓′—1¼′ wide, with slightly revolute margins, a slender yellow midrib glabrous or slightly pubescent below toward the base and conspicuous reticulate veinlets, deciduous; petioles slender pubescent early in the season, becoming glabrous. Flowers opening from the middle of June to the middle of July, on villose pedicels, becoming sometimes nearly glabrous in the autumn, ⅛′—¼′ in length; calyx pale green, villose-pubescent, its lobes ovate, ciliate on the margins, shorter than the lobes of the corolla, their appendages lanceolate; staminodia rounded at apex, longer than the corolla-lobes. Fruit ripening in September, subglobose to oblong-obovoid, ¼′—⅓′ long and ¼′—⅓′ in diameter; seed oblong, rounded at the ends, about ⅖′ long.

A tree, in favorable positions 20°—25° high, with spinose branches forming an irregular open head, and slender often zigzag red-brown lustrous branchlets, the lateral branchlets often ending in stout spines; more often an irregularly branched shrub 10°—15° high, spreading on the banks of streams into great thickets. Bark of the trunk thick, pale and dark gray, rough and scaly, exfoliating in large scales.

Distribution. Texas, dry limestone cliffs and cañon bottoms and by streams dry during a large part of the year, valley of the upper Guadalupe River (Comal, Kendall and Kerr Counties) to the valley of the Rio Grande (Uvalde County), and northward to the valley of the upper Brazos River (Palo Pinto County); in Cohahuila (near Saltillo).

4. Bumelia lycioides Gærtn. f. Ironwood. Buckthorn.

Leaves elliptic to oblanceolate, acute, acuminate, or rarely rounded at apex, gradually narrowed at base, covered when they unfold especially below with silky villose pubescence, soon glabrous, and at maturity bright green and glabrous on the upper surface, light green and sometimes coated on the lower surface with pale pubescence, thin and rather firm, finely reticulate-venulose, 3′—6′ long and ½′—2′ wide, with a pale thin conspicuous midrib sometimes slightly pubescent below near the base, deciduous in the autumn; petioles slender, slightly grooved, mostly pubescent early in the season, usually becoming glabrous, ½′—1′ in length. Flowers appearing at midsummer on slender glabrous pedicels ½′ long, in crowded many-flowered fascicles; calyx glabrous, ovoid-campanulate, with rounded lobes rather shorter than the corolla; staminodia broad-ovate, denticulate, nearly as long as the narrow appendages; ovary ovoid, slightly hairy toward the base only, gradually contracted into a short thick style. Fruit ripening and falling in the autumn, ovoid or obovoid, about ⅔′ in length; flesh thick; seed short-oblong to subglobose, rounded at apex, nearly ¼′ long, with a pale conspicuous hilum.

A tree, 25°—30° high, with a short trunk rarely more than 6′ in diameter, stout flexible branches usually unarmed or furnished with short stout slightly curved spines occasionally developing into leafy spinescent branches, and short thick spur-like lateral branchlets slightly puberulous when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous, light red-brown, rather lustrous, and marked by numerous pale lenticels, and in their second year dark or light brown tinged with red or ashy gray. Winter-buds minute, obtuse, nearly immersed in the bark, with pale dark brown glabrous scales. Bark of the trunk thin, light red-brown, the generally smooth surface broken into small thin persistent scales. Wood heavy, hard, not strong, close-grained, light brown or yellow, with thick lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. Usually in low moist soil on the borders of swamps and streams; rocky bluffs of the Ohio River near Cannelton, Perry County, southern Indiana, southern Illinois (Hardin, Pope and Pulaski Counties), to southeastern Missouri (Butler County) and to western Kentucky, western and central Tennessee, central Mississippi and northern Louisiana (West Feliciana Parish); and through western Arkansas to the coast region of eastern Texas (Beaumont, Jefferson County, and Columbia, Brazoria County); central Alabama; Florida southward to St. Mark’s, Wakulla County, and to Taylor, Alachua and Volusia Counties, and to northwestern Georgia (Catoosa County), and the valley of the Savannah River in Georgia and South Carolina, and northward through eastern North Carolina to southeastern Virginia (Norfolk County).

5. Bumelia angustifolia Nutt. Ants’ Wood. Downward Plum.

Leaves obovate, rounded at apex, and gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, with slightly thickened revolute margins, glabrous, thick and coriaceous, pale blue-green on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 1′—1½′ long and ¼′—1¼′ wide, with a pale slender midrib, and very obscure veins and veinlets; usually persistent on the branches until the end of their second winter; petioles stout, grooved, rarely ¼′ in length. Flowers generally appearing in October and November, on slender glabrous pedicels seldom more than ½′ in length, in few or many-flowered crowded fascicles; calyx glabrous, divided nearly to the base into narrow-ovate lobes rounded at apex and half as long as the divisions of the corolla furnished with linear-lanceolate appendages as long as the ovate acute denticulate staminodia; ovary narrow-ovoid, slightly hairy at base only, gradually contracted into an elongated style. Fruit ripening in the spring, on slender drooping stems, usually 1 fruit only being developed from a fascicle of flowers, oblong or slightly obovoid, rounded at the ends, ½′—¾′ long and ¼′ in diameter, with thick sweet flesh; seed oblong, rounded at apex, ½′ long.

A tree, sometimes 20° high, with a short trunk rarely exceeding 6′—8′ in diameter, graceful pendulous branches forming a compact round head, and rigid spinescent divergent lateral branchlets often armed with acute slender spines sometimes 1′ in length, and when they first appear thickly coated with loose pale or dark brown deciduous tomentum, becoming light brown tinged with red or ashy gray. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, and covered with rufous tomentum. Bark of the trunk ⅓′—½′ thick, gray tinged with red, and deeply divided by longitudinal and cross fissures into oblong or nearly square plates. Wood heavy, hard, although not strong, very close-grained, light brown or orange-colored, with thick lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, shores of Indian River to the southern keys, and on the west coast from Cedar Keys to East Cape, and here less abundant and usually on rocky shores and in the interior of low barren islands; on the Bahama Islands and in Cuba.

4. Chrysophyllum L.

Trees, with terete branchlets usually coated while young with dense tomentum, and naked buds. Leaves short-petiolate, bright green and glabrous on the upper surface and coated on the lower surface with brilliant silky pubescence or tomentum, persistent. Flowers on pedicels from the axils of minute acute bracts, in dense many-flowered fascicles; calyx usually 5-parted, the divisions nearly equal, obtuse; corolla 5 or rarely 6 or 7-lobed, tubular, campanulate or subrotate, white or greenish white; filaments short, subulate or filiform, enlarged into broad connectives; anthers ovoid or triangular, extrorse or rarely partly introrse, the cells spreading below; ovary usually 5-celled, style crowned by a 5-lobed stigma. Fruit short-oblong, ovoid or globose. Seed ovoid; seed-coat coriaceous, dull or lustrous; hilum subbasilar, elongated, conspicuous; embryo erect, surrounded by more or less pungent fleshy albumen; cotyledons oblong, foliaceous.

Chrysophyllum is tropical, with fifty or sixty species most abundant in the New World, with a small number of species in western and southern tropical Africa, southern Asia, Australia, and the Hawaiian Islands, and with one species in southern Florida. The most valuable species, Chrysophyllum Cainito L., a native of the West Indies and now cultivated in all tropical countries and naturalized in many parts of Central and South America, produces the so-called star-apple, a succulent edible blue or purple and green fruit the size and shape of a small apple.

The generic name, from χρυσός and φύλλον, is in allusion to the golden covering of the under surface of the leaves.

1. Chrysophyllum oliviforme Lam. Satin-leaf.

Leaves revolute in the bud, oval, acute or contracted into a short broad point or sometimes rounded at apex, abruptly cuneate at base, thick and coriaceous, bright blue-green on the upper surface and covered on the lower surface and on the petiole with brilliant copper-colored pubescence, 2′—3′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, with a broad prominent midrib deeply impressed on the upper side and numerous straight veins arcuate hear the margins; petioles stout, ½′—⅔′ in length. Flowers appearing in Florida irregularly throughout the year and often found on a branch with ripe or half-grown fruits, on stout pedicels shorter than the petioles, covered like the calyx with rufous tomentum, in few or many-flowered fascicles in the axils of leaves or at the base of lateral branchlets in those of earlier years; calyx divided nearly to the base into broad rounded lobes rather shorter than the tube of the subrotate white corolla with short spreading rounded lobes; ovary 5-celled, pubescent, gradually contracted into a short style crowned by a broad 5-lobed stigma. Fruit usually 1-seeded by abortion, on stems 1′ long, usually only a single fruit being produced from a flower-cluster, ovoid or sometimes nearly globose, dark purple, roughened by occasional excrescences, with a thick tough skin inclosing the juicy sweet mawkish flesh light purple on the exterior, lighter toward the interior, and quite white in the centre; seed narrowed at the ends, ½′ long, covered with a thin light brown coat closely invested with a white glutinous aril-like pulpy mass.

A tree, 25°—30° high, with a tall straight trunk sometimes a foot in diameter, upright branches forming a compact oblong head, and slender slightly zigzag branchlets coated when they first appear with ferrugineous tomentum, becoming in their second year light red-brown or ashy gray and covered with small pale elevated circular lenticels; in sandy soil under the shade of Pine-trees in the Everglade Keys a shrub 6° high or less. Bark of the trunk ¼′ thick, light brown slightly tinged with red, and broken by shallow fissures into large irregularly shaped plates separating on the surface into small thin scales. Wood very heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, light brown shaded with red, with thin lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, rich hummocks, from Mosquito Inlet on the east coast to the Everglade Keys, Dade County and to the southern keys, and on the west coast from the shores of the Caloosahatchie River to the neighborhood of Cape Sable; local and nowhere common; on the Bahama Islands, and in Cuba, Porto Rico and Jamaica.

5. Mimusops L.

Trees or rarely shrubs, with stout terete branchlets, small naked buds, and sweet juice. Leaves usually clustered at the end of the branches, with slender inconspicuous transverse veins and minute reticulate veinlets, persistent. Flowers on clavate pedicels from the axils of minute deciduous bracts; calyx 6—8-parted, the divisions in 2 series, those of the exterior series almost valvate in the bud; corolla white, barely longer than the calyx, subrotate, usually dilated at the throat, 6—8-lobed, the lobes furnished at base with a pair of petal-like appendages; stamens as many as the lobes of the corolla; filaments short, dilated; anthers lanceolate, their connectives excurrent, acute, or sometimes aristate at apex; staminodia as many as the lobes of the corolla, scale-like or petaloid, entire, 2-lobed or laciniate; ovary ovoid, hirsute or puberulous, gradually narrowed into a slender style stigmatic at apex. Fruit globose, 1 or 2-seeded, tipped with the much thickened elongated style; skin crustaceous, indurate; flesh thick and dry. Seed oblong-ovoid, slightly compressed; seed-coat crustaceous, chestnut-brown and lustrous; hilum elongated, lateral or minute, basilar; embryo surrounded by thick fleshy albumen; cotyledons flat, thick and fleshy, much longer than the short erect radicle.

Mimusops with thirty or forty species is widely distributed through the tropics of the two hemispheres, a single species reaching the shores of southern Florida. Several species produce hard heavy timber, edible fruits, or valuable milky juices.

The significance of the generic name, from μιμώ and ὄψις in allusion to the shape of the corolla, is not apparent.

1. Mimusops emarginata Britt. Wild Dilly.

Mimusops Sieberi Chap., not A. DC.

Leaves clustered at the end of the branches, involute in the bud oblong-elliptic, or occasionally slightly obovate, rounded or retuse at apex, rounded or cuneate at base, with slightly thickened revolute margins, bright red when they unfold, and slightly puberulous on the under surface of the midrib, and at maturity thick and coriaceous, bright green and lustrous, covered on the upper surface with a slight glaucous bloom, conspicuously reticulate-venulose, 3′—4′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, with a stout midrib glabrous, or puberulous with rusty hairs below, and deeply impressed above; appearing in Florida in April and May and deciduous during their second year; petioles slender, grooved, rusty-pubescent, especially while young, ½′—1′ in length. Flowers opening in the spring on slender pedicels near the end of the branches, coated with rusty tomentum and 1′ or more long, from the axils of leaves of the year or from those of fallen leaves of the previous year; calyx narrow-ovoid, divided nearly to the base into 6 lobes, those of the outer row lanceolate, acute, covered on the outer surface with rusty brown tomentum and on the inner surface with pale pubescence, thickened and usually marked at the base on the outer surface by black spots, those of the inner row ovate, acute, keeled toward the base, light greenish yellow and pale-pubescent; corolla light yellow tinged with green, ⅔′ in diameter, with 6 spreading lanceolate acute divisions entire or erosely toothed toward the apex, their appendage slender, acute and from one half to two thirds their length; staminodia minute, nearly triangular, entire; ovary narrow-ovoid, dark red, puberulous toward the base with pale hairs, and gradually narrowed into an elongated exserted style stigmatic at apex. Fruit ripening at the end of a year, in the spring or in early autumn, on a stout erect stem about 1′ long, and persistent until after the tree flowers the following year, subglobose to slightly obovoid, flattened and compressed at apex, 1′—1½′ in diameter, usually 1-seeded by abortion, with a thick dry outer coat roughened by minute rusty brown scales, and thick spongy flesh filled with milky juice; seed ½′ long, with an elongated lateral hilum.

A tree, in Florida rarely more than 30° high, with a short gnarled trunk 12′—15′ in diameter and usually hollow and defective, thick branches forming a compact round head, and stout branchlets clustered at the end of the branches of the previous year, coated when they first appear with dark rufous pubescence, becoming glabrous and light orange-brown at the end of a few weeks, and in their second year covered with thick ashy gray or light red-brown scaly bark and marked by elevated obcordate leaf-scars displaying 3 large dark conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, rusty-tomentose. Bark of the trunk about ¼′ thick and irregularly divided by deep fissures into ridges rounded on the back and broken into small nearly square plates. Wood very heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, rich very dark brown, with light-colored sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, only on the southern keys; not common; on the Bahama Islands and in Cuba.

LVII. Ebenaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and alternate simple entire leaves, without stipules. Flowers diœcious or polygamous, regular, axillary, articulate with the bibracteolate pedicels; calyx persistent; corolla hypogynous, regular; disk 0; stamens more numerous than the lobes of the corolla, inserted on its base, fewer and rudimentary or 0 in the pistillate flower; filaments short; anthers introrse, 2-celled; ovary several-celled; ovules 2 in each cell, suspended from its apex, anatropous; raphe dorsal; micropyle superior. Fruit a 1 or several-seeded berry. Seeds with copious albumen; embryo axile.

The Ebony family with seven genera and a large number of species is widely distributed in tropical and temperate regions, with two representatives of its most important genus, Diospyros, in the flora of the United States.

1. Diospyros L.

Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, without a terminal bud, scaly axillary buds, coriaceous leaves revolute in the bud, and fibrous roots. Flowers mostly diœcious, from the axils of leaves of the year or of the previous year; staminate smaller than the pistillate and usually in short few-flowered bracted cymes; pistillate generally solitary; calyx 4-lobed, the lobes valvate in the bud, accrescent under the fruit; corolla 4-lobed, the lobes sinistrorsely contorted in the bud, more or less contracted in the throat, the lobes spreading or recurved; stamens usually 16, inserted on the bottom of the corolla in two rows and in pairs, those of the outer row rather longer than and opposite those of the inner row; filaments free, slender; anthers oblong, apiculate, the cells opening laterally by longitudinal slits; stamens rudimentary or 0 in the pistillate flower; ovary usually 4-celled, each cell more or less completely divided by the development of a false longitudinal partition from its anterior face, rudimentary or 0 in the staminate flower; styles 4, spreading, 2-lobed at apex; stigmas 2-parted or lobed; ovule solitary in each of the divisions of the cells. Fruit globose, oblong or conic, 1—10-seeded, surrounded at base by the enlarged persistent calyx. Seeds pendulous, oblong, compressed; seed-coat thick and bony, dark, more or less lustrous; embryo axile, straight or somewhat curved; cotyledons foliaceous, ovate or lanceolate; radicle superior, cylindric, turned toward the small hilum.

Diospyros, which is chiefly tropical, is widely distributed with more than two hundred species in the two hemispheres, with a few species extending beyond the tropics into eastern North America, eastern Asia, southwestern Asia, and the Mediterranean region.

Diospyros produces hard close-grained valuable wood, with dark or black heartwood and thick soft yellow sapwood. The ebony of commerce is partly produced by different tropical species. The fruit is often edible, and some of the species are important fruit-trees in China and Japan.

The generic name, from Διός and πυρός, is in allusion to the life-giving properties of the fruit.

Conspectus of the Species of the United States.

Flowers on branchlets of the year; anthers opening longitudinally nearly throughout their entire length; filaments pubescent; pistillate flowers with 8 rudimentary stamens; ovary nearly glabrous; leaves oval; fruit green, yellow, orange color or rarely black.

1. D. virginiana (A, C).

Flowers on branchlets of the previous year; anthers opening only near the apex; filaments glabrous; pistillate flowers without rudimentary stamens; ovary pubescent; leaves cuneate-oblong or obovate; fruit black.

2. D. texana (C).

1. Diospyros virginiana L. Persimmon.

Leaves ovate-oblong to oval or elliptic, acuminate or abruptly acuminate at apex, narrowed and cuneate or rounded or rarely broad and rounded at base, coriaceous, glabrous, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, 4′—6′ long and 2′—3′ wide, with a broad flat midrib, about six pairs of conspicuous primary veins arcuate near the margins and reticulate veinlets; falling in the autumn usually without much change of color; petioles stout, glabrous or slightly villose-pubescent, ½′—1′ in length. Flowers appearing when the leaves are more than half grown on branchlets of the year, from March in the extreme south to June in the north; the staminate in 2—3-flowered pubescent pedunculate cymes, on pedicels from the axils of minute lanceolate acute caducous bracts and furnished near the middle with two minute-caducous bractlets; the pistillate solitary, on short recurved pedicels, bibracteolate with conspicuous acute bractlets ciliate on the margins and often ¼′ in length; corolla of the staminate flower tubular, ½′ long, slightly contracted below the short acute reflexed lobes forming before expansion a pointed 4-angled bud rather longer than the broad-ovate acute foliaceous ciliate calyx-lobes inflexed on the margins; stamens with short slightly hairy filaments and linear-lanceolate anthers opening throughout their length; pistillate flower ¾′ long, with a greenish yellow or creamy white corolla nearly ½′ broad; stamens 8, inserted in one row below the middle of the corolla, with short filaments and sagittate abortive or sometimes fertile anthers; ovary conic, pilose toward the apex, ultimately 8-celled, and gradually narrowed into the four slender styles hairy at the base. Fruit on a short thick stem, ripening at the north late in autumn or earlier southward, often persistent on the branches during the winter, depressed-globose to ovoid or slightly obovoid, rounded or pointed at apex, ¾′—2′ in diameter, yellow or pale orange color, often with a bright cheek, and covered with a glaucous bloom, turning yellowish brown when partly decayed by freezing, surrounded at base by the spreading calyx 1′—1½′ in diameter, with broad ovate pointed lobes recurved on the margins; flesh austere while green, yellowish brown, sweet and luscious when fully ripened by the action of frost, or in some forms remaining hard and green during the winter; seeds oblong, rounded on the dorsal edge, nearly straight on the ventral edge, rounded at the ends, much flattened, ½′ long and ⅓′ wide, with a thick hard pale brown rugose testa, a narrow pale hilum and a slender raphe.

A tree, occasionally 50°—60° high, with a short trunk 16′—20′ in diameter, spreading often pendulous branches forming a broad or narrow round-topped head, and slender slightly zigzag glabrous or rarely puberulous branchlets with a thick pith-cavity, light brown when they first appear, becoming during their first winter light brown or ashy gray and marked by occasional small orange-colored lenticels and by elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars, with deep horizontal lunate depressions; or in the primeval forest, under the most favorable conditions, sometimes 100°—130° high, with a long slender trunk free of branches for 70°—80° and rarely exceeding 2° in diameter; frequently not more than 15° or 20° high and sometimes shrubby in habit. Winter-buds: axillary, broad-ovoid, acute, ⅛′ long, with thick imbricated dark red-brown or purple lustrous scales often persistent at the base of young branchlets during the season. Bark of the trunk ¾′—1′ thick, dark brown tinged with red, or dark gray, and deeply divided into thick square plates broken into thin persistent scales, with heavy strong dark brown sometimes nearly black heartwood often undeveloped until the tree is over one hundred years old; used in turnery, for shoe-lasts, plane-stocks, and preferred for shuttles to other American woods. The fruit contains tannin, to which it owes its astringent qualities, and is eaten in great quantities in the southern states. The inner bark is astringent and bitter.

Distribution. Light sandy well drained soil, or in the Mississippi basin sometimes on the deep rich bottom-lands of river valleys; Lighthouse Point, New Haven, New Haven County, Connecticut, and Long Island, New York, through southern Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana and Illinois, to southeastern Iowa, eastern Kansas, central Oklahoma, and southward to De Soto County, Florida, southern Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas to the valley of the Colorado River (Burnet County); very common in the south Atlantic and Gulf states, often covering with shrubby growth by means of the stoloniferous roots abandoned fields and springing up by the side of roads and fences; ascending on the Appalachian Mountains to altitudes of 3500°; rare toward the western limits of its range in Texas. In Missouri and Arkansas passing into the var. platycarpa Sarg. with larger broad-ovate leaves rounded or cordate at base or rarely elliptic, more or less densely pubescent on the lower surface, especially on the midrib and petiole, often 2½′—4′ long and 2′—2½′ wide, and at the end of vigorous shoots up to 6′ in length, and depressed-globose, yellow, rarely nearly black (f. atra Sarg.), fruit much depressed at top and bottom, 1¾′—3′ wide and about 1′ high, with sweet succulent flesh, ripening in September or early October, and seeds conspicuously rounded on the dorsal edge, much compressed, dark chestnut-brown and lustrous, only slightly rugose, ¾′ long and ½′ wide. A tree usually not more than 12°—25° high, with a trunk 16′—30′ in diameter and rather stouter branchlets densely villose-pubescent sometimes for two or three years, or becoming glabrate at the end of their first season. Hills near Allenton, St. Louis County, and on the western slopes of the Ozark Mountains and the adjacent prairies of southeastern Missouri and prairies of northwestern Arkansas, eastern Kansas and Oklahoma. In Dade County, Florida, Diospyros virginiana is replaced by the var. Mosieri Sarg. with smaller staminate flowers, nearly globose fruit with rather less compressed dark chestnut-brown lustrous only slightly rugose seeds. A small tree with slightly fissured light gray bark.

Several named varieties of Diospyros virginiana are distinguished and cultivated by pomologists.

2. Diospyros texana Scheele. Black Persimmon. Chapote.

Leaves oblong-cuneate to obovate, rounded and often retuse at apex and cuneate at base, covered below when they unfold with thick pale tomentum and above with scattered long white hairs, and at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark green and lustrous, glabrous or puberulous on the upper surface, paler and pubescent on the lower surface, ¾′—1½′ long and nearly 1′ wide, with a broad midrib and about 4 pairs of arcuate primary veins and reticulate veinlets; unfolding in February and March, and falling during the following winter without change of color; petioles short, thick, and hairy. Flowers appearing in early spring when the leaves are about one third grown, on branches of the previous year; staminate on slender drooping pedicels furnished near the middle with minute caducous bractlets, in 1—3-flowered crowded pubescent fascicles; pistillate on stouter club-shaped pedicels, solitary or rarely in pairs; calyx of the staminate flower ⅛′ long and deeply divided into 5 ovate or lanceolate silky-tomentose lobes recurved after the opening of the flower, and much shorter than the corolla ⅛′ long, creamy white, and slightly contracted below the 5 short spreading rounded lobes ciliate on the margins; stamens, with glabrous filaments shorter than the corolla, and linear-lanceolate anthers opening at apex only by short slits; pistillate flowers without rudimentary stamens, ⅓′ long, with oblong acute silky-tomentose calyx-lobes half the length of the pubescent corolla nearly ½′ across the short spreading lobes; ovary ovoid, pubescent like the young fruit, ultimately 8-celled. Fruit ripening in August, subglobose, ½′—1′ in diameter, and 3—8-seeded, surrounded at base by the large thickened leathery calyx sometimes 1′ in diameter, with oblong pubescent reflexed lobes, the thick tough black skin inclosing thin sweet insipid juicy dark flesh; seeds triangular, rounded on the back, narrowed and flattened at the pointed apex, ⅓′ long, about ⅛′ thick, with a bony lustrous light red pitted coat.

An intricately branched tree, occasionally 40°—50° high, with a trunk 18′—20′ in diameter, dividing at some distance above the ground into a number of stout upright branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and slender terete slightly zigzag branchlets, coated at first with pale or rufous tomentum, ashy gray, glabrous or puberulous during their first winter, later becoming brown and marked by minute pale lenticels and by small elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars displaying a lunate row of fibro-vascular bundle-scars; often much smaller, and toward the northern and western limits of its range a low many-stemmed shrub. Winter-buds obtuse, barely more than /16′ long, with broad-ovate scales rounded on the back and coated with rufous tomentum. Bark of the trunk smooth, light gray slightly tinged with red, the outer layer falling away in large irregularly shaped patches displaying the smooth gray inner bark. Wood heavy, with black heartwood often streaked with yellow and clear bright yellow sapwood; used in turnery and for the handles of tools. The fruit, which is exceedingly austere until it is fully ripe, stains black, and is sometimes used by Mexicans in the valley of the Rio Grande to dye sheepskins.

Distribution. Southwestern Texas, Matagorda County (neighborhood of Matagorda and Bay City) to the lower Rio Grande, and northward to San Saba, Lampasas and Bexar Counties; in Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas; possibly in southern Lower California; abundant in western and southern Texas: in the neighborhood of the coast on the borders of prairies in rich moist soil; westward on dry rocky mesas and in isolated cañons; very common and of its largest size in the region between the Sierra Madre and the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas.

LVIII. Styraceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with stellate pubescence or lepidote, watery juice, and scaly buds. Leaves alternate, simple, penniveined, without stipules. Flowers regular, perfect; calyx more or less adnate to the tube of the corolla; disk 0; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary superior or partly superior, crowned with a simple style; ovules anatropous. Fruit drupaceous, with thin dry flesh, and a thick-walled 1-seeded bony stone. Seeds, with albumen.

The Storax family is confined to North and South America, the Mediterranean region, eastern Asia and the Malay Archipelago. Of the six genera of this family two are represented in the flora of North America.

Conspectus of the Genera of the United States.

Calyx adherent to the whole surface of the ovary; corolla 4-lobed. Fruit oblong-obovoid, 2 or 4-celled and 2 or 4-winged.

1. Halesia.

Calyx adherent to the base only of the ovary; corolla usually 5-parted. Fruit subglobose, 1-celled.

2. Styrax.

1. Halesia L. Silver Bell Tree.

Trees or shrubs, with stellate pubescence, slender terete pithy branchlets, without a terminal bud, axillary buds with imbricated accrescent scales, and fibrous roots. Leaves involute in the bud, thin, elliptic, oblong-ovate or oblong-ovoid, denticulate, deciduous. Flowers opening in early spring, on slender elongated drooping ebracteolate pedicels from the axils of foliaceous acuminate or acute caducous bracts, in fascicles or short racemes from the axils of leaves of the previous year; calyx-tube obconic, adherent to the whole surface of the ovary, the limb short, 4-toothed, with minute triangular teeth, open in the bud; corolla epigynous, campanulate, 4-lobed, or divided nearly to the base, the lobes convolute or imbricated in the bud, thin and white or rarely tinged with rose; stamens 8—16; filaments elongated, shorter than the corolla, slightly attached at base, or sometimes free, flattened below; anthers oblong, adnate or free at the very base; ovary 2 or 4-celled, gradually contracted into an elongate glabrous or tomentose style stigmatic at apex; ovules 4 in each cell, attached by elongated funiculi at the middle of the axis, the 2 upper ascending, the 2 lower pendulous; raphe dorsal; micropyle inferior and superior. Fruit ripening in the autumn, elongated, oblong or obovoid and gradually narrowed at base; skin tough, separable, light green and lustrous, turning reddish brown late in the autumn; exocarp indehiscent, thick, becoming dry and corky at maturity, produced into 2 or 4 broad thin wings cuneate at base and rounded at apex; stone bony, cylindric, obovoid or ellipsoid, gradually narrowed at base into a slender stipe inclosed in the wings, narrowed above and terminating in the enlarged style protruding above the wings, usually obscurely and irregularly 8-angled or sulcate, 1—4-celled. Seed solitary in each cell, elongated, cylindric; seed-coat thin, light brown, lustrous, adherent to the walls of the stone, the delicate inner coat attached to the copious fleshy albumen; embryo terete, axile, erect; cotyledons oblong, as long as the elongated radicle turned toward the minute hilum.

Halesia is confined to the southeastern United States.

The generic name is in honor of Stephen Hales (1677—1761), an English clergyman, author of “Vegetable Staticks.”

Conspectus of the Species of the United States.

Fruit 4-winged; flowers fascicled; corolla slightly lobed.

Fruit oblong to slightly obovoid.

Flowers hardly more than ½′ long; fruit 1½′ in length.

1. H. carolina (A, C).

Flowers 2′ long; fruit up to 2′ in length.

2. H. monticola (A).

Fruit clavate; flowers usually not more than ¼′ long.

3. H. parviflora (C).

Fruit 2-winged; flowers often racemose; corolla divided nearly to the base.

4. H. diptera (C).

1. Halesia carolina L.

Mohrodendron carolinum Britt.

Leaves elliptic to oblong-obovate, abruptly acuminate and long-pointed at apex, gradually narrowed and rounded or cuneate at base, and dentate with small remote callous teeth, slightly pubescent or covered below when they unfold with thick hoary tomentum and densely stellate-pubescent above (var. mollis Perkins), and at maturity dark yellow-green and glabrous on the upper surface, pale and glabrous or slightly villose below on the slender yellow midrib and primary veins, 3′—4′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, and on leading shoots up to 6′—7′ in length; turning yellow in the autumn before falling; petioles slender, glabrous, pubescent or tomentose, early in the season, becoming nearly glabrous, ¼′—½′ in length. Flowers about ½′ long, on glabrous or densely or slightly villose pedicels ½′—¾′ in length, from the axils of ovate caducous serrate glabrous or pubescent bracts rounded at apex, in crowded fascicles; calyx obconic, glabrous, slightly pubescent or hoary-tomentose (var. mollis Lange), the lobes ciliate; corolla narrowed below into a short tube, ¾′ across, sometimes faintly tinged with rose, rarely divided nearly to the base (var. dialypetala Schn.); stamens 10—16; filaments villose with occasional white hairs; ovary 4-celled. Fruit oblong to oblong-obovate, 4-winged, 1½′ long, ½′—¾′ in diameter; stone ellipsoid to slightly obovoid, narrowed below into a short stipe and above into the slender apex terminating in the elongated persistent style, slightly angled, ½′—⅝′ long, usually 1-seeded by abortion; seed rounded at the narrow ends, ¼′—⅓′ long.

A round-headed tree, rarely 40° high, with a short trunk often divided near the ground into several spreading stems, and 12′—18′ in diameter, small branches, and slender branchlets glabrous or densely pubescent early in the season, becoming slightly pubescent or nearly glabrous and orange-brown, and marked by large obcordate leaf-scars during their first winter and dark red-brown the following year; more often a shrub with wide-spreading stems. Winter-buds ellipsoid to ovoid, ⅛′ long, with thick broad-ovate dark red acute puberulous scales rounded on the back, those of the inner rows becoming strap-shaped, bright yellow and sometimes ½′ long. Bark of the trunk ½′ thick, slightly ridged, reddish brown, separating into thin closely appressed scales. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light brown with thick lighter-colored sapwood.

Distribution. Wooded slopes and the banks of streams, southern West Virginia (Fayette and Summers Counties); Piedmont region of North and South Carolina, ascending to altitudes of 2000°, through central Georgia to western Florida, and through Alabama south to Dallas and Mount Vernon Counties; the var. mollis with the type and the more common form in western Florida southward to Suwanee County. A seedling shrubby Halesia (var. Meehanii Perkins) with thicker smaller darker green rugose leaves, smaller cup-shaped flowers on shorter pedicels, appeared many years ago in the Meehan Nurseries at Germantown, Pennsylvania, and is possibly a hybrid but of obscure origin.

Often cultivated in the eastern United States, in California and in western and central Europe; hardy as far north as eastern Massachusetts.

2. Halesia monticola Sarg.

Leaves elliptic to oblong-obovate, abruptly acuminate at apex, cuneate or occasionally rounded at base, remotely dentate with minute blunt teeth, covered above when they unfold with short white hairs and below with thick hoary tomentum, half-grown and pubescent on the midrib below when the flowers open at the end of May, and at maturity thin, dark dull green on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, glabrous with the exception of a few hairs on the lower side of the slender midrib and primary veins, 8′—11′ long and 1½′—2½′ wide; turning yellow in the autumn before falling; petioles slender, villose-pubescent when they first appear, soon glabrous, ½′—¾′ in length. Flowers 2′ long on pedicels ½′—1′ in length, from the axils of obovate or elliptic acute pubescent bracts ½′—¾′ long and ¼′ wide; calyx obconic, glabrous or slightly villose-pubescent; corolla 1′ in diameter, contracted below into a short limb; stamens 10—16; filaments slightly villose toward the base, ovary 4-celled. Fruit oblong-obovoid, cuneate at base, 4-winged, 1¾′—2′ long, 1′ in diameter; stone ovoid-ellipsoid, abruptly narrowed below into a short stipe, gradually narrowed above into the long apex, prominently angled about 1¼′—1⅓′ in length.

A tree, often 80°—90° high, with a trunk 3° in diameter and free of branches for 50°—60°, comparatively small spreading and erect branches forming a round-topped head and slender branchlets covered when they first appear with pale hairs, soon glabrous, lustrous, light red-brown or orange-brown during their first winter and dark red-brown in their second year. Winter-buds ovoid to ellipsoid, acuminate, much compressed, gibbous on the back, the outer scales thick, slightly keeled on the back, lustrous, bright red, ⅓′ long. Bark of the trunk thick, separating freely into long broad loosely attached red-brown plates ½′—¾′ thick.

Distribution. Mountain slopes at altitudes from 3000°—4000°, western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee and western Georgia; passing into the var. vestita Sarg., with leaves often rounded at base, coated below and on the petioles when they unfold with snow-white tomentum, and at maturity pubescent over the lower surface, especially on the midrib and veins, and occasionally pale rose-colored flowers (f. rosea Sarg.); banks of streams, near Marion, McDowell County, North Carolina; Heber Springs, Carroll County, Arkansas; occasionally cultivated with the var. vestita and hardy in the Arnold Arboretum and in Rochester, New York.

Halesia monticola in cultivation grows rapidly with a single trunk; and is hardy in eastern Massachusetts.

3. Halesia parviflora Michx.

Leaves oblong-ovate to slightly obovate or elliptic, abruptly long-pointed or acuminate at apex, narrowed and cuneate or rounded at base, finely serrate with minute glandular teeth, densely covered when they unfold with hoary tomentum, becoming pubescent or glabrous, 2½′—3¼′ long and 1′—1¼′ wide, with a slender midrib and primary veins villose-pubescent below; petioles hoary-tomentose when they first appear, becoming glabrous, ¼′—⅓′ in length. Flowers opening the end of March or early in April, ¼′—⅓′ long, on pedicels more or less densely villose-pubescent with white hairs, becoming nearly glabrous, ⅓′—⅖′ in length; calyx densely hoary-tomentose or rarely villose-pubescent; corolla ⅓′—½′ in diameter; stamens 10—16, filaments slightly villose. Fruit ripening in August and September, clavate, gradually narrowed into the long stipitate base, ¾′—1½′ long, 4-winged, the wings narrow, of equal width or occasionally with the alternate wings narrower than the others; stone ovoid, abruptly narrowed below into a short stipe, gradually narrowed to the apex, obscurely angled, ¾′—1¼′ long.

A slender tree, 25°—30° high, with a long trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, small light brown slightly ridged branches and slender branchlets hoary-tomentose when they first appear, becoming pubescent or nearly glabrous by the end of their first season and light gray-brown in their second year; or a shrub only a few feet tall. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, slightly compressed, villose, about ⅛′ long. Bark of the trunk thick, dark brown or nearly black, and divided by deep longitudinal furrows into narrow rounded rough ridges.

Distribution. Northern Florida, in sandy uplands (St. John, Clay, Jackson, Gadsden and Lafayette Counties); not common; Alabama (Lee County); eastern Mississippi (Laurel, Jones County), and eastern Oklahoma (near Page, Le Flore County).

4. Halesia diptera Ellis.

Mohrodendron dipterum Britt.

Leaves ovate to obovate, oval or elliptic, abruptly long-pointed or rarely rounded at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate or rounded at base, undulate-serrate with remote minute callous teeth, coated below with pale tomentum and pubescent above when they unfold, and at maturity thin, light green and glabrous or pubescent on the slender midrib on the upper surface and paler and soft-pubescent on the lower surface, 3′—4′ long and 2′—2½′ wide, and at the end of vigorous branches up to 8′ long and 3′ wide, with pale conspicuous arcuate veins and reticulate veinlets; petioles slender, pubescent, ½′—¾′ in length. Flowers opening from the middle of March to the end of April, usually nearly 1′ long, on slender tomentose pedicels 1½′—2′ in length, from the axils of obovate puberulous bracts rounded or acute at apex and ½′—¾′ long, in few-flowered fascicles or in 4—6-flowered racemes; calyx thickly covered with hoary tomentum, the short lobes nearly glabrous on the inner surface; corolla puberulous on the outer surface, divided nearly to the base into slightly obovate or oval spreading lobes; stamens 8—16, usually 8, nearly as long as the corolla; filaments covered with pale hairs, and sometimes free from the corolla; ovary usually 2, rarely 4-celled and covered, like the style, with pale pubescence. Fruit oblong to slightly obovoid, compressed, 1½′—2′ long, often nearly 1′ wide, with two broad wings and often with 2 or rarely 3 narrow wings between them; stone ellipsoid, 1½′—1¾′ long, conspicuously ridged, gradually narrowed below into the short slender stipe and above into the thickened pubescent style; seed acuminate at the ends, about ¾′ in length.

A tree, occasionally 30° high, with a short or rarely a tall trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, spreading branches forming a wide head and slender branchlets light green and more or less thickly covered with pale pubescence when they first appear, usually becoming glabrous, orange color, or reddish brown, lustrous and marked by the large elevated obcordate leaf-scars during their first winter, dark red-brown in their second season and dividing the following year into irregular pale longitudinal fissures; more often a shrub, with numerous stout spreading stems. Winter-buds ovoid, obtuse, /16′ long, with broad-ovate acute light red pubescent scales, those of the inner ranks becoming strap-shaped, scarious and ¼′ long. Bark of the trunk ⅓′—½′ thick, brown tinged with red, and divided by irregular longitudinal often broad fissures, and separating into small thin closely appressed scales. Wood light, soft, strong, close-grained, light brown with thick lighter-colored sapwood.

Distribution. Low wet woods and the borders of swamps and streams; near Savannah (Elliott) and in southwestern Georgia, western Florida (Leon and Gadsden Counties), southern Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to the valley of the lower Neches River, Texas, and to southwestern Arkansas (Miller County).

Occasionally cultivated in the gardens of the eastern United States and western Europe. Doubtfully hardy in Massachusetts and western New York.

2. Styrax L.

Trees or shrubs, lepidote or stellate-tomentose except on the upper surface of the leaves, with slender terete slightly zigzag branchlets, without a terminal bud, axillary buds, with imbricated scales, and fibrous roots. Leaves involute in the bud, entire or slightly serrate. Flowers usually white on short ebracteolate drooping pedicels from the axils of small bracts, in simple or branched usually drooping axillary racemes; calyx cup-shaped, adnate to the base of the ovary or nearly free, the margin truncate, obscurely or conspicuously 5-toothed or rarely 2 or 5-parted; corolla epigynous, campanulate, 5 or rarely 6 or 7-parted, with a short tube usually longer than the lanceolate oblong or spatulate erect and spreading or revolute lobes valvate or imbricated in the bud, stamens 8—13, usually 10, longer than the corolla slightly united below into a ring or short tube; filaments flattened above; cells of the anthers linear parallel, erect; ovary broad-conic, subglobose or depressed, densely villose or rarely glabrous, at first 3-celled, becoming 1-celled or nearly 1-celled after anthesis, crowned by a subulate or thickened style terminating in a small indistinctly 3-lobed or capitate stigma; ovules few or rarely solitary, ascending; raphe dorsal, micropyle inferior. Fruit globose or slightly obovoid, drupaceous; pericarp hard and indehiscent or irregularly 3-valved or fleshy and irregularly dehiscent; endocarp glabrous, crustaceous or indurate; seed 1 by abortion or very rarely 2, filling the cavity of the stone, erect; testa membranaceous, mostly adherent to the walls of the stone; albumen fleshy or rarely horny; cotyledons usually broad, the elongated terete radicle turned toward the broad basal hilum.

Styrax is widely distributed in warm and tropical countries except in tropical and south Africa and in Australasia, extending northward into the southeastern United States and to California, southern Europe, central and western China and central Japan. Of nearly one hundred species which are now distinguished five are found within the territory of the United States; one of these occasionally becomes a small tree.

Storax and benzoin, aromatic resinous balsams, are obtained from Styrax officinale L. of southern Europe and Asia Minor, and from Styrax Benzoin Dryand. of Malaysia.

The generic name is that of the Greek name of Styrax officinale.

1. Styrax grandiflora Ait.

Leaves thin, deciduous, obovate, rounded and abruptly pointed or acute or acuminate or rarely rounded at apex, cuneate or rounded at the narrow base, entire or remotely serrate with small apiculate teeth, when they unfold ciliate on the margins, slightly stellate-pubescent on the midrib and veins above, and coated below with hoary tomentum, and at maturity pale green and glabrous or nearly glabrous above, pale tomentose and villose on the midrib and veins below, 2½′—5′ long and 1′—3′ wide; petioles ¼′ in length, hoary-tomentose early in the season, becoming pubescent. Flowers opening in early spring after the leaves are more than half grown, ¾′—1′ long, on slender pubescent or tomentose pedicels ¼′ in length, in tomentose leafy erect or spreading axillary racemes 5′ or 6′ long, their bracts and bractlets linear, minute, tomentose, caducous; calyx more or less coarsely 5-toothed, membranaceous, tomentose on the outer surface; corolla 5-parted, the lobes longer than the tube, imbricated in the bud, membranaceous, oblong-obovate, rounded or acute at apex, stellate-pubescent on the outer surface; stamens 10, about as long as the corolla, villose-pubescent below the middle, united below into a short ring; ovary slightly inferior, obovoid, tomentose, 3-celled; style filiform, glabrous, exserted; ovules 3 or 4 in each cell. Fruit hoary-tomentose, slightly obovoid, rounded and tipped at apex with the remnants of the style, gradually narrowed and surrounded below by the calyx, ⅓′ long, and ¼′ in diameter, the outer coat crustaceous, indehiscent; seed obovoid, dark orange-brown, filling the cavity of the fruit.

A tree, rarely 40° high, with a tall straight trunk sometimes 8′ in diameter, short spreading branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and slender branchlets thickly coated when they first appear with hoary stellate pubescence more or less persistent during three seasons, ultimately glabrous and light or dark chestnut-brown; more often a broad shrub 6°—20° high. Bark of the trunk ⅓′—½′ thick, close, smooth and dark red-brown. Winter-buds: axillary, often 3, superposed, acute, covered with hoary ultimately rusty tomentum, about ⅛′ long.

Distribution. Low wet woods and the borders of swamps; southeastern Virginia, southward usually near the coast to the valley of the Apalachicola River, Florida, and through the Gulf states to western Louisiana, ranging inland to northern Georgia, northeastern Mississippi, and to the valley of the Red River at Natchitoches, Louisiana; of its largest size and perhaps only arborescent near Laurel Hill, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana.

LIX. Symplocaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with simple pubescence, watery juice, scaly buds, and fibrous roots. Leaves simple, alternate, coriaceous or thin, pinnately veined, usually becoming yellow in drying, without stipules. Flowers regular, perfect, or polygamo-diœcious, on ebracteolate pedicels, in dense or lax axillary spikes or racemes, with small caducous bracts; calyx campanulate, 5-lobed, open in the bud, the tube adnate to the ovary, enlarged after anthesis; corolla divided nearly to the base into 3—11 usually 5 lobes imbricated in the bud; disk 0; stamens usually numerous, inserted in many series on the base of the corolla or rarely 4 in one series; filaments filiform or flattened, more or less united below into clusters; anthers ovoid-globose, introrse, 2-celled, the cells lateral, opening longitudinally; ovary inferior or partly inferior, 2—5-celled, contracted into a simple style, with an entire or slightly lobed terminal stigma; ovules 2 or rarely 4 in each cell, suspended from its inner angle, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit a drupe (in the North American species), crowned with the persistent lobes of the calyx, with thin dry flesh and a bony 1-seeded stone. Seed oblong, suspended; seed-coat membranaceous; embryo terete, erect in copious fleshy albumen; cotyledons much shorter than the long slender radicle turned toward the broad conspicuous hilum.

The family consists of the genus Symplocos.

1. Symplocos L’Her.

Characters of the family.

Symplocos with nearly three hundred species inhabits chiefly the warmer parts of America, Asia, and Australia, one species occurring in the southern United States.

Symplocos contains a yellow coloring matter, and the bark and leaves of some species have medical properties.

The generic name, from Σύμπλοκος, relates to the union of the filaments of some of the species.

1. Symplocos tinctoria L’Her. Sweet Leaf. Horse Sugar.

Leaves revolute in the bud, oblong, acute or acuminate at apex, gradually narrowed at base, obscurely crenulate-serrate with remote teeth, or sometimes nearly entire, coated below when they unfold with pale tomentum, glabrous or tomentose above, and furnished on the margins with minute dark caducous glands, and at maturity subcoriaceous, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler and pubescent on the lower surface, 5′—6′ long and 1′—2′ wide, with a broad midrib rounded and sometimes puberulous on the upper side, inconspicuous arcuate veins and reticulate veinlets; northward and at high altitudes falling in the autumn, and southward remaining on the branches until after the opening of the flowers the following spring; petioles stout, slightly winged, ⅓′—½′ in length. Flowers: flower-clusters inclosed in the bud by ovate acute orange-colored scales brown and ciliate on the margins, each of the flower-buds surrounded by 3 imbricated oblong bracts rounded or pointed at apex and ciliate on the margins, the longest as long as the calyx and one third longer than the 2 lateral bracts; flowers fragrant, opening from the 1st of March at the south to the middle of May on the southern Appalachian Mountains, on short pedicels enlarged into thick hemispheric receptacles covered with long white hairs, in nearly sessile many-flowered clusters in the axils of leaves of the previous year; calyx oblong, cup-shaped, dark green and puberulous, with minute ovate scarious lobes rounded at apex; corolla creamy white, ¼′ long, with rounded lobes; stamens exserted, with slender filaments united at base into 5 clusters, and orange-colored anthers; ovary 3-celled, furnished on the top with 5 dark nectariferous glands placed opposite the lobes of the calyx, and abruptly contracted into a slender style gradually thickened toward the apex and longer than the corolla. Fruit ripening in the summer or early autumn, ovoid, ¼′ long, dark orange-colored or brown; seed ovoid, pointed, with a thin papery chestnut-brown coat.

A tree, occasionally 30°—35° high, with a short trunk barely exceeding 6′-8′ in diameter, slender upright branches forming an open head, and stout terete pithy branchlets light green and coated with pale or rufous tomentum when they first appear, or sometimes glabrous, and covered with scattered white hairs, reddish brown to ashy gray, tinged with red and usually more or less pubescent or often covered with a glaucous bloom during their first and second years, later growing darker, roughened by occasional small elevated lenticels and marked by the low horizontal obcordate leaf-scars displaying a central cluster of large fibro-vascular bundle-scars; or more often a shrub. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, covered with broad-ovate nearly triangular acute scales, those of the inner rows accrescent on the young branchlets, and at maturity oblong-obovate, rounded and often apiculate at apex, light green, glabrous or pilose, ciliate on the margins, and often ½′ in length. Bark of the trunk ⅓′—½′ thick, ashy gray slightly tinged with red, divided by occasional narrow fissures and roughened by wart-like excrescences. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light red or brown, with thick lighter colored often nearly white sapwood of 18—20 layers of annual growth. The leaves are sweet to the taste and are devoured in the autumn by cattle and horses, and, like the bark, yield a yellow dye occasionally used domestically. The bitter aromatic roots have been used as a tonic.

Distribution. Moist rich soil, often in the shade of dense forests; peninsula of Delaware to northern Florida and from the coast to altitudes of nearly 4000° on the Blue Ridge in North and South Carolina, and to eastern Texas and southern Arkansas; in the Gulf states usually along the borders of Cypress-swamps.

LX. Oleaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, scaly buds, their inner scales accrescent, opposite leaves, without stipules, and fibrous roots. Flowers perfect, diœcious or polygamous, regular; calyx 4-lobed, or 0; corolla of 2—4 petals, or 0; disk 0; stamens 2—4, rudimentary or 0 in unisexual pistillate flowers; anthers attached on the back below the middle, often apiculate by the prolongation of the connective, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally usually by lateral slits; ovary free, 2 or rarely 3-celled, rudimentary or 0 in the staminate flower; style simple; ovules 2 in each cell, pendulous, anatropous; micropyle superior. Fruit (in the North American arborescent genera) a samara or berry. Seed pendulous; seed-coat membranaceous; embryo straight in copious fleshy albumen; cotyledons flat, much longer than the short terete superior radicle turned toward the minute hilum.

The Olive family with twenty-five genera is widely distributed in temperate and tropical regions chiefly in the northern hemisphere. Of the five genera indigenous to the United States four are arborescent. To this family belong Olea europæa L., the Olive-tree of the Mediterranean basin, now largely cultivated in California for its fruit, and the Lilacs, Forsythias, Privets, and Jasmines, favorite garden plants in all countries with temperate climates.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Genera of the United States.

Fruit a winged samara; leaves usually compound.

1. Fraxinus.

Fruit a drupe; leaves simple.

Flowers usually without petals.

2. Forestiera.

Flowers with petals.

Corolla of 4 long linear petals united only at base; leaves deciduous.

3. Chionanthus.

Corolla tubular; leaves persistent.

4. Osmanthus.

1. Fraxinus L. Ash.

Trees or shrubs, with thick furrowed or rarely thin and scaly bark, usually ash-colored branchlets, with thick pith, and compressed obtuse terminal buds much larger than the lateral buds. Leaves petiolate, unequally pinnate or rarely reduced to a single leaflet, deciduous; leaflets conduplicate in the bud, usually serrate, petiolulate or sessile. Flowers diœcious or polygamous, produced in early spring on slender elongated pedicels, without bractlets, in open or compact slender-branched panicles, with obovate linear or lanceolate caducous bracts, terminal on leafy shoots of the year, developed from the axils of new leaves, or from separate buds in the axils of leaves of the previous year, or at the base of young branchlets, and covered by 2 ovate scales; calyx campanulate, deciduous or persistent under the fruit, or 0; corolla 2—4-parted, the divisions conduplicate in the bud, united at base, or 0; stamens usually 2, rarely 3 or 4, inserted on the base of the corolla, or hypogynous; filaments terete, short or rarely elongated; anthers ovoid or linear-oblong, the cells opening by lateral slits; ovary 2 or rarely 3-celled, contracted into a short or elongated style terminating in a 2-lobed stigma; ovules suspended in pairs from the inner angle of the cell; raphe dorsal. Fruit a 1 or rarely 2 or 3-seeded winged samara; body terete or slightly flattened contrary to the septum, with a dry or woody pericarp produced into an elongated more or less decurrent wing, usually 1-celled by abortion or sometimes 2 or 3-celled and winged. Seed solitary in each cell, oblong, compressed, gradually narrowed and rounded at the ends, filling the cavity of the fruit; seed-coat chestnut-brown.

Fraxinus with thirty to forty species is widely distributed in the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, and within the tropics occurs on the islands of Cuba and Java. Of the eighteen North American species here recognized all, with the exception of Fraxinus dipetala Hook., of California, are large or small trees.

Fraxinus produces tough straight-grained valuable wood, and some of the species are large and important timber-trees. The waxy exudations from the trunk and leaves of Fraxinus Ornus L., of southern Europe and Asia Minor furnish the manna of commerce used in medicine as a gentle laxative; and the Chinese white wax is obtained from the branches of Fraxinus chinensis Roxb.

Fraxinus is the classical name of the Ash-tree.

Conspectus of the North American Arborescent Species.

Flowers with a corolla, in terminal panicles on lateral leafy branchlets of the year; leaflets 3—7, lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate (Ornus).

1. F. cuspidata (E, H).

Flowers without a corolla, diœcious or polygamous, in axillary panicles, from separate buds, in the axils of leaves of the previous year (Fraxinastrum).

Flowers with a calyx.

Leaflets with obscure veins, not more than ¾′ long; fruit narrow-spatulate to oblong-obovate; rachis slightly winged.

2. F. Greggii (E).

Leaflets with distinct veins, more than ¾′ long; rachis without a wing.

Body of the fruit compressed, its wing extending to the base.

Branchlets 4-sided.

Leaves usually 5-foliolate, with ovate acute leaflets; flowers unknown.

3. F. Lowellii (F).

Leaves usually reduced to a single ovate or orbicular leaflet; flowers polygamous.

4. F. anomala (F).

Branchlets terete.

Leaflets 5—7, oblong-ovate; fruit oblong-elliptic to spatulate, often 3-winged, long-stipitate.

5. F. caroliniana (A, C).

Leaflets 3—5, oblong; fruit lanceolate to oblanceolate, the body extending to the base of the fruit.

6. F. pauciflora (C).

Body of the fruit nearly terete.

Wing of the fruit terminal or slightly decurrent on the body.

Leaves and branchlets glabrous (tomentose in one form of 7).

Leaflets sessile or nearly sessile 5—7 rarely 5, ovate to oblong-ovate, rarely elliptic, acute or short-acuminate, glaucescent below.

7. F. Standleyi (H).

Leaflets stalked.

Leaflets 5—7, ovate to lanceolate, abruptly pointed or acuminate, usually pale below.

8. F. americana (A, C).

Leaflets usually 5, ovate to obovate, rounded or acute at apex.

9. F. texensis (C).

Leaves and branches pubescent; leaflets oblong-ovate to lanceolate, pale below; fruit linear-oblong.

10. F. biltmoreana (A, C).

Wing of the fruit decurrent to below the middle of the body.

Leaflets 7—9, usually 7; leaves and branches pubescent (glabrous in one form of 12).

Fruit 2′—3′ in length.

11. F. profunda (A, C).

Fruit 1′—2½′ in length.

12. F. pennsylvanica (A, E).

Leaflets 3—5.

Leaves and branchlets glabrous; fruit up to 1½′ in length.

13. F. Berlandieriana (C, E).

Leaves and branchlets pubescent or glabrous; fruit not more than ½′ in length.

14. F. velutina (F, H).

Leaflets 5—7, usually 7, the lateral generally sessile; leaves and branchlets pilose-pubescent, rarely glabrous.

15. F. oregona (B, G).

Flowers without a calyx; leaflets 5—11; wing of the fruit decurrent to the base of the body.

Branchlets quadrangular; lateral leaflets short-stalked.

16. F. quadrangulata (A, C).

Branchlets terete; lateral leaflets sessile.

17. F. nigra (A, C).

1. Fraxinus cuspidata Torr.

Leaves 5′—7′ long, with a slender pale petiole sometimes slightly wing-margined, and 3—7 lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate long-stalked leaflets gradually narrowed at apex into a long slender point, cuneate at base nearly entire or coarsely and remotely serrate above the middle with recurved teeth (var. serrata Rehd.), or with 3—5, rarely 7-foliolate leaves, with broader often ovate entire leaflets occasionally with simple leaves at the base of the branchlets (var. macropetala Rehd.); slightly puberulous when they unfold on the lower surface, and at maturity thin, dark green above, paler below, 1½′—2½′ long and ¼′—¾′ wide, with a pale midrib and obscure veins; petiolules slender, sometimes nearly 1′ in length. Flowers perfect, extremely fragrant, appearing in April, in open glabrous panicles 3′—4′ long and broad, terminal on lateral leafy branchlets developed from the axils of leaves of the previous year, calyx cup-shaped, /16′ long, with acute apiculate attenuate teeth of unequal length, deciduous, corolla ⅔′ long, thin and white, divided to below the middle into 4 linear-oblong lobes pointed at apex, and much longer than the nearly sessile oblong long-pointed anthers ovary 2-celled, with a thick 2-lobed nearly sessile stigma. Fruit elliptic to oblong-obovate, 1′ long and ¼′ wide, the wing round and slightly emarginate at apex, and decurrent nearly to the base of the flat nerveless longer body.

A tree, rarely 20° high, with a short trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, and slender terete branchlets light red-brown when they first appear, soon becoming darker and marked by scattered pale lenticels and ashy gray and roughened by the dark elevated lunate leaf-scars in their second year; more often a shrub or small shrubby tree, with numerous slender spreading stems 6°—8° tall. Winter-buds: terminal acute, nearly ½′ long, with dark reddish brown glutinous scales.

Distribution. Rocky slopes and dry ridges; Western Texas, valley of the Rio Grande (mouth of Devil’s River, Valverde County) to the Chisos Mountains, and in southern New Mexico; in Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Chihuahua; the var. macropetala in cañons of northern Arizona; the var. serrata (fig. 738) in Coahuila.

2. Fraxinus Greggii A. Gray.

Leaves 1½′—3′ long, with a winged petiole and rachis, and 3—7 narrow spatulate to oblong-obovate leaflets entire or crenately serrate above the middle with remote teeth, a slender midrib, and obscure reticulate veins, thick and coriaceous, dark green on the upper surface rather paler and covered with small black dots on the lower surface, ½′—¾′ long, ⅛′—¼′ wide, and nearly sessile. Flowers perfect or unisexual, on slender pedicels ⅛′—¼′ long, from the axils of ovate acuminate rusty-pubescent bracts, in pubescent panicles ½′—¾′ in length; calyx campanulate, scarious; stamens 1 or 2, filaments longer than the calyx, anthers declinate, nearly ⅛′ long; ovary broad-ovate, rounded at apex, longer than the calyx, the short style terminating in large reflexed stigmatic lobes. Fruit narrow-spathulate to oblong-obovate, ½′—⅔′ long and about ¼′ wide, the thin wing decurrent on the short terete body, rounded and emarginate at apex and tipped with the elongated persistent conspicuous style.

A tree, rarely 20°—25° high, with a trunk 8°—10° long and occasionally 8′ in diameter, and slender terete branchlets dark green and puberulous when they first appear, soon becoming ashy gray and roughened by numerous minute pale elevated lenticels, gradually turning dark gray, or brown in their second and third years; more often a shrub, with numerous slender erect stems 4°—12° tall. Winter-buds: terminal, about ⅛′ long, obtuse, with thick ovate light brown pubescent scales rounded on the back. Bark of the trunk thin, gray or light brown tinged with red, separating on the surface into large papery scales. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, brown, with thick lighter-colored sapwood.

Distribution. Western Texas, along rocky beds of streams and deep ravines, Valverde County (near Devil’s River, Del Rio and Comstock); on the mountains of northeastern Mexico; apparently most common and of its largest size on the Sierra Nevada of Nuevo Leon.

3. Fraxinus Lowellii Sarg.

Leaves 3½′—6′ long, with a stout glabrous or slightly villose petiole, and 5 or rarely 3 ovate stalked leaflets, acuminate and long-pointed, acute or rarely rounded at apex, cuneate at base, serrate, often only above the middle, with small remote teeth, yellow-green, glabrous, or puberulous along the midrib above, glabrous or rarely sparingly villose near the base of the slender pale midrib below, 2¼′—3′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, with thin primary veins arching and united near the slightly thickened and revolute margins; on vigorous shoots occasionally 1-foliolate with a broad-ovate or semiorbicular leaflet. Flowers unknown. Fruit ripening in July, in long glabrous panicles, oblong-obovate to oblong-elliptic, surrounded at base by the minute slightly dentate calyx, 1′—1½′ long, ¼′—⅓′ wide, the wing broad or gradually narrowed and rounded, and often emarginate at apex and extending to the base of the thin compressed many-rayed body about three-quarters the length of the fruit.

A tree, 20°—25° high, with dark deeply furrowed bark, stout quadrangular often winged branchlets orange-brown in their first season and dark gray-brown the following year.

Distribution. Arizona, rocky slopes of Oak Creek Cañon about twenty miles south of Flagstaff, Coconino County, and in Copper Cañon, west of Camp Verde, Yavapai County.

4. Fraxinus anomala S. Wats.

Leaves mostly reduced to a single leaflet but occasionally 2 or 3-foliolate, the leaflets broad-ovate or orbicular, rounded or acute or rarely obcordate at apex, cuneate or cordate at base, and entire, or sparingly crenately serrate above the middle, covered above when they unfold with short pale hairs and pubescent beneath, and at maturity thin but rather coriaceous, dark green above, paler below, 1½′—2′ long and 1′—2′ wide, or when more than one much smaller, with a broad rather conspicuous midrib and obscure veins, and when solitary raised on a stout grooved petiole rusty-pubescent early in the season, becoming glabrous, and often 1½′ long, or short-petiolulate in the compound leaves. Flowers appearing when the leaves are about two thirds grown, in short compact pubescent panicles, with strap-shaped or lanceolate acute bracts ½′ long and covered with thick brown villose tomentum, perfect or unisexual by the abortion of the stamens, the 2 forms occurring in the same panicle; calyx cup-shaped, minutely 4-toothed; anthers linear-oblong, orange colored, raised on slender filaments nearly as long as the stout columnar style. Fruit obovate, ½′ long, the wing rounded and often deeply emarginate at apex, surrounding the short flattened striately nerved body, and ⅓′ wide.

A tree, 18°—20° high, with a short trunk 6′—7′ in diameter, stout contorted branches forming a round-topped head, and branchlets at first quadrangular, dark green tinged with red and covered with pale pubescence, orange colored and puberulous in their first winter and marked by elevated pale lenticels and narrow lunate leaf-scars, and in their second or third year terete and ashy gray; often a low shrub, with numerous spreading stems. Winter-buds: terminal broad-ovoid, acuminate or obtuse, covered with thick orange-colored tomentum, and ⅛′—¼′ long. Bark of the trunk dark brown slightly tinged with red, ¼′ thick and divided by shallow fissures into narrow ridges separating into small thin appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, light brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood of 30—50 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. In the neighborhood of streams; valley of the McElmo River, southwestern Colorado; Carriso Mountains, San Juan County, northwestern New Mexico; northeastern (Apache County), and the Grand Cañon of the Colorado River, Coconino County, Arizona; southern Utah to the Charleston Mountains, southwestern Nevada and adjacent California (Inyo County).

5. Fraxinus caroliniana Mill. Water Ash. Swamp Ash.

Leaves 7′—12′ long, with an elongated stout terete pale petiole, and 5—7 long-stalked ovate to oblong acute or acuminate leaflets rarely rounded at apex, cuneate or sometimes rounded or subcordate at base, and coarsely serrate with acute incurved teeth, or entire, pilose above and more or less hoary-tomentose below when they unfold, and at maturity thick and firm, 3′—6′ long and 2′—3′ wide, dark green above, paler or sometimes yellow-green and glabrous or pubescent (var. Rehderiana Sarg.) beneath, particularly along the conspicuous midrib and the numerous arcuate veins connected by obscure reticulate veinlets. Flowers diœcious, appearing in February and March in short or ultimately elongated panicles inclosed in the bud by chestnut-brown pubescent scales; staminate flower with a minute or nearly obsolete calyx, and 2 or sometimes 4 stamens, with slender filaments and linear apiculate anthers; calyx of the pistillate flower cup-shaped, deeply divided and laciniate, as long as the ovary gradually narrowed into an elongated slender style. Fruit elliptic to oblong-obovate, frequently 3-winged, surrounded at base by the persistent calyx, 2′ long, ⅓′—¾′ wide, often marked on the 2 faces by a conspicuous impressed midvein, the body short, compressed, and surrounded by the broad thin many-nerved sometimes bright violet-colored wing, acute or acuminate, or rounded and emarginate at apex and usually narrowed below into a stalk-like base.

A tree, rarely more than 40° high, with a trunk sometimes 12′ in diameter, small branches forming a narrow often round-topped head, and slender terete branchlets light green and glabrous or tomentose when they first appear, light brown tinged with red and sometimes covered with a glaucous bloom or rarely pubescent or tomentose (var. Rehderiana Sarg.) in their first winter, becoming in their second year light gray or yellow, occasionally marked by large pale lenticels, and by the elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars displaying a short row of conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds: terminal, ⅛′ long, with 3 pairs of ovate acute chestnut-brown puberulous scales, those of the outer rank thickened at base, rounded on the back, and shorter than the others. Bark of the trunk /16′—⅛′ thick, light gray, more or less marked by large irregularly shaped round patches, and separating on the surface into small thin closely appressed scales. Wood light, soft, weak, close-grained, nearly white sometimes tinged with yellow, with thick lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. Deep river swamps inundated during several months of the year, usually under the shade of larger trees, or rarely in drier ground; coast region of the Atlantic and Gulf states, valley of the Potomac River, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., to Florida southward to Lake County and on the west coast to the valley of the lower Apalachicola River, and to the valley of the Neches River (Beaumont, Jefferson County), Texas, and northward through western Louisiana to southwestern (Malvern, Hot Springs County) Arkansas; east of the Mississippi River occasionally appearing in isolated stations remote from the coast (Anson County, North Carolina, C. L. Boynton, Pike County, Georgia, R. H. Harper, Forest County, Mississippi, T. G. Harbison); in Cuba.

6. Fraxinus pauciflora Nutt. Water Ash.

Fraxinus floridana Sarg.

Leaves 5′—9′ long, with an elongated stout terete petiole, and 3—7, usually 5, elliptic to oblong-obovate or ovate leaflets, acuminate or rarely abruptly pointed at apex, gradually narrowed and rounded at the often unsymmetric base, finely or coarsely serrate, scurfy-pubescent above and hoary-tomentose below when they unfold, and at maturity thick and firm, dark green and glabrous or puberulous on the upper surface and more or less tomentose on the lower surface, 3′—4′ long and 1′—1¼′ wide, with a slender midrib, and thin primary veins arcuate and united within the thickened revolute margins; petiolules of the lateral leaflets ¼′—½′ long, much shorter than those of the terminal leaflet. Flowers diœcious, appearing late in February or early in March, in elongated panicles inclosed in the bud by chestnut-brown pubescent scales; staminate flower composed of an annular disk and 2 or 3 stamens, with short filaments and apiculate anthers; calyx of the pistillate flower cup-shaped, slightly lobed, as long as the ovary gradually narrowed into the slender style. Fruit oblong to lanceolate or oblanceolate, surrounded at base by the persistent calyx, 1′—2′ long, ¼′—½′ wide, marked on each of the 2 faces by a broad impressed midvein, the body near the base of the many-nerved wing narrowed, rounded, and emarginate at apex.

A tree, 30°—40° high, with a trunk sometimes 12′ in diameter, small spreading branches, and slender terete branchlets light orange-brown and occasionally marked by large pale lenticels during their first season, ashy gray and roughened the following year by the large horizontal obcordate elevated leaf-scars displaying a central ring of fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds terminal, broad-ovoid, acute, rusty-pubescent, about ¼′ long. Bark of the trunk /16′—⅛′ thick, light gray, and broken on the surface into small thin closely appressed scales.

Distribution. Deep swamps; valleys of the St. Mary’s and Flint Rivers (Albany), southern Georgia; Florida, near Jacksonville, Duval County, valley of the Caloosahatchee River, and Bonita Springs, Lee County, to the shores of Lake Okeechobee, and in the valley of the lower Apalachicola River; most abundant in southern Florida.

7. Fraxinus Standleyi Rehd.

Leaves 5′—7′ long, with a slender glabrous petiole flattened, or slightly concave on the upper side, and 7—9 ovate to oblong-ovate rarely elliptic leaflets, acute or short-acuminate or rarely rounded at apex, broad-cuneate at base, slightly and irregularly serrate, yellow-green and glabrous above, glaucescent, slightly reticulate, minutely punctulate, glabrous or slightly villose on the slender midrib below, or rarely closely villose over the entire lower surface, 1½′—2½′ long and 1′—2′ wide, with usually 5—7 primary veins, the terminal leaflet raised on a petiolule up to ½′ long, the lateral short-petiolulate, or nearly sessile. Flowers not seen. Fruit ripening in September, on slender pedicels, in glabrous panicles 3′—5′ long, oblong-obovate, acute, rarely obtuse and occasionally emarginate at apex, surrounded at base by the minute calyx deeply divided into acuminate lobes, ¾′—1½′ long and ⅙′—¼′ wide, the wing decurrent nearly to the middle of the subterete or slightly compressed ellipsoid or oblong body.

A tree, sometimes 30° high, usually smaller, with a trunk only a few inches in diameter, and slender terete glabrous branches orange-brown or rarely on vigorous shoots dark red-brown and lustrous. Winter-buds: terminal ovoid, gradually narrowed and acute at apex, ⅓′ long.

Distribution. Mountain cañons at altitudes of 5500°—8000°; New Mexico (Lincoln, Grant and Luna Counties); Arizona (Cochise, Pima and Coconino Counties); on the San José Mountains, Sonora, at an altitude of 7200°; passing into var. lasia Rehd. with branchlets, lower surface of the 7 leaflets and petioles densely tomentose; in Oak Creek and Sycamore cañons south of Flagstaff, Coconino County, at Fort Apache, Navajo County, on the White Mountains, Graham County, and on the Chiricahua Mountains, Cochise County, Arizona; and near Santa Rita, Grant County, New Mexico. A single plant, possibly a shrub, of the Mexican Fraxinus papilosa Ling. differing chiefly from F. Standleyi in the glaucous papillose under surface of the leaves, has been seen at an altitude of 6750° on the west sides of the San Luis Mountains, Grant County, New Mexico.

8. Fraxinus americana L. White Ash.

Leaves 8′—12′ long, with a stout grooved petiole, and 5—9, usually 7, ovate to oblanceolate or oval, often falcate abruptly pointed or acuminate leaflets, cuneate or rounded at base, crenulate-serrate or nearly entire, thin but firm, dark green above, pale or light green and glabrous or slightly pubescent below, or rarely thicker, lanceolate, long-acuminate, entire, glabrous and silvery white below (var. crassifolia Sarg.), 3′—5′ long and 1½′—3′ wide, with a broad midrib, and numerous conspicuous veins arcuate near the margins; falling early in the autumn after turning on some individuals deep purple and on others clear bright yellow; petiolules ¼′—½′ or that of the terminal leaflet up to 1′ in length. Flowers diœcious, opening before the leaves late in the spring, in compact ultimately elongated glabrous panicles from buds covered with dark ovate scales rounded at apex and slightly keeled on the back; calyx campanulate, slightly 4-lobed in the staminate flower, and deeply lobed or laciniately cut in the pistillate flower; stamens 2 or occasionally 3, with short stout filaments, and large oblong-ovate apiculate anthers at first nearly black, later becoming reddish purple; ovary contracted into a long slender style divided into 2 spreading dark purple stigmatic lobes. Fruit rarely deeply tinged with purple (f. iodocarpa Fern.), 1′—2½′ long and usually about ¼′ wide, or sometimes not more than ½′ long (var. microcarpa A. Gray), in crowded clusters 6′—8′ in length, lanceolate or oblanceolate, surrounded at base by the persistent calyx, the wing pointed or emarginate at apex and terminal or slightly decurrent on the terete body.

A tree, sometimes 120° high, with a tall massive trunk 5°—6° in diameter, stout upright or spreading branches forming in the forest a narrow crown, or with sufficient space a round-topped or pyramidal head, and thick terete branchlets dark green or brown tinged with red and covered with scattered pale caducous hairs when they first appear, soon becoming light orange color or ashy gray and marked by pale lenticels, becoming in their first winter gray or light brown, lustrous, often covered with a glaucous bloom and roughened by the large pale semiorbicular leaf-scars displaying near the margins a line of conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds: terminal broad-ovoid, obtuse, with 4 pairs of scales, those of the outer pair ovate, acute, apiculate, conspicuously keeled on the back, nearly black, slightly puberulous, about one half the length of the scales of the second pair rather shorter than those of the third pair, lengthening with the young shoots, and at maturity oblong-ovate, narrowed and rounded at apex, keeled, ½′ long, and rusty-pubescent, the scales of the inner pair becoming ⅔′ long, ovate, pointed, keeled, sometimes slightly pinnatifid, green tinged with brown toward the apex, covered with pellucid dots and very lustrous. Bark of the trunk 1′—3′ thick, dark brown or gray tinged with red, and deeply divided by narrow fissures into broad flattened ridges separating on the surface into thin appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, tough, and brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood; used in large quantities in the manufacture of agricultural implements, for the handles of tools, in carriage-building, for oars and furniture, and in the interior finish of buildings; the most valuable of the American species as a timber-tree.

Distribution. Common in rich rather moist soil on low hills, and in the neighborhood of streams; Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, southern Quebec and Ontario and the southern peninsula of Michigan, and westward and southward to eastern Minnesota, central Iowa, southeastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, and northern Oklahoma to the valley of the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River in Woods County (near Alva, G. W. Stevens), and to Florida to Taylor County and the valley of the lower Apalachicola River, and through the Gulf states to the valley of the Trinity River, Texas; of its largest size on the bottom-lands of the basin of the lower Ohio River; southward and west of the Mississippi River less common and of smaller size; on the Appalachian Mountains up to altitudes of 3800°; the var. crassifolia at Mt. Victory, Harding County, Ohio, Campbell, Dunklin County, Missouri, and near Texarkana, Bowie County, Texas.

Often planted in the eastern states as a shade and ornamental tree, and occasionally in western and northern Europe.

A form with the wing of the fruit extending nearly to the middle of the body distinguished as Fraxinus Smallii Britt. has the appearance of a hybrid between F. americana and F. pennsylvanica var. lanceolata; individuals of this form have been found near McGuire’s Mill, on the Yellow River, Guinnett County, Georgia; near Rochester, Munroe County, New York; and near Lake Wingra, Dane County, Wisconsin.

9. Fraxinus texensis Sarg. Mountain Ash.

Leaves 5′—8′ long, with a long slender terete petiole, and 5 or occasionally 7 usually long-stalked ovate broad-oval or obovate leaflets, rounded or acute, or often abruptly pointed at apex, cuneate, rounded or slightly cordate at base, and coarsely crenulate-serrate, chiefly above the middle, light green slightly tinged with red and pilose with occasional pale caducous hairs when they unfold, and at maturity thick and firm, glabrous, dark green on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, 1′—3′ long and ¾′—2′ wide, and occasionally furnished below with tufts of long white hairs at the base of the broad midrib, and in the axils of the numerous conspicuous veins forked near the margins and connected by coarse reticulate veinlets; petiolules slender, ¼′—½′ and on the terminal leaflet up to 1′ in length. Flowers diœcious, appearing in March as the leaves begin to unfold, in compact glabrous panicles from the axils of leaves of the previous year, and covered in the bud by ovate rounded orange-colored scales; staminate flower composed of a minute or nearly obsolete 4-lobed calyx and 2 stamens, with short filaments and linear-oblong light purple apiculate anthers; calyx of the female flower deep cup-shaped, and divided to the base into 4 acute lobes; ovary gradually narrowed into a long slender style. Fruit in short compact clusters, spatulate to oblong, surrounded at base by the persistent calyx, ½′—1′ long and ⅛′—¼′ wide, the wing rounded or occasionally emarginate at apex, and terminal on the short terete many-rayed body; very rarely with 3 or 4 wings extending to the base of the fruit.

A tree, rarely 50° high, with a short trunk occasionally 2°—3° in diameter, thick spreading often contorted branches, and stout terete branchlets dark green tinged with red and slightly puberulous when they first appear, becoming light yellow-brown or light orange color during the summer, and in their first winter light brown marked by remote oblong pale lenticels and by large elevated lunate leaf-scars displaying a row of conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and dark or reddish brown in their second or third season; usually much smaller. Winter-buds: terminal acute, with 3 pairs of scales, those of the first pair broad-ovate, rounded at the apex, dark orange color, pilose toward the base, and rather shorter than the ovate rounded scales of the second pair coated with rufous tomentum and becoming ½′ long or about one half the length of the linear strap-shaped scales of the inner pair truncate or emarginate at the apex and orange color. Bark of the trunk ½′—¾′ thick, dark gray and deeply divided by narrow fissures into broad scaly ridges. Wood heavy, hard, strong, light brown, with thin lighter colored sapwood; valued as fuel and occasionally used for flooring.

Distribution. Texas, high dry limestone bluffs and ridges, in the neighborhood of Dallas, Dallas County, and Fort Worth, Tarrant County, to the valley of the Colorado River near Austin, Travis County, and over the Edwards Plateau to Bandera, Kerr, Edwards and Palo Pinto Counties.

Hardy in the Arnold Arboretum.

10. Fraxinus biltmoreana Beadl.

Leaves 10′—12′ long, with a stout pubescent or puberulous petiole, and 7—9 oblong-ovate to ovate-lanceolate or oval often falcate entire or obscurely toothed leaflets acuminate at apex, rounded or cuneate and often inequilateral at base, yellow-bronze color and nearly glabrous above, coated beneath, particularly on the midrib and veins, with long white hairs when they unfold, and at maturity 3′—6′ long, 1½′—2′ wide, thick and firm in texture, dark green and slightly lustrous on the upper surface, pale, or glaucous and puberulous on the lower surface and villose along the slender yellow midrib, and primary veins arcuate near the slightly thickened and incurved margins; petiolules pubescent, ¼′—½′ or that of the terminal leaflet up to 2′ in length. Flowers diœcious, appearing with the leaves about the 1st of May, in a rather compact pubescent panicle, with scarious caducous bracts and bractlets; staminate flower with a minute cup-shaped very obscurely dentate calyx and nearly sessile oblong acute anthers; calyx of the pistillate flower much larger and deeply lobed; ovary oblong, gradually narrowed into the slender style divided at apex into 2 short stigmatic lobes. Fruit linear-oblong, in elongated glabrous or puberulous clusters, 1½′—1¾′ long and about ¼′ wide, the wing terminal, only slightly narrowed at the ends, emarginate at apex, and two and a half to three times longer than the short ellipsoid terete many-nerved body.

A tree, 40°—50° high, with a trunk 12′—18′ in diameter, stout ascending or spreading branches forming an open symmetrical head, and stout light or dark gray branchlets soft-pubescent usually during two seasons, much roughened during their first winter and often for two or three years by the large elevated mostly obcordate or sometimes orbicular leaf-scars displaying a marginal line of fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds: terminal ovoid, usually broader than long, and covered with bright brown scales, those of the outer pair keeled on the back and apiculate at apex, the others rounded, accrescent, and slightly villose. Bark of the trunk rough, dark gray, and slightly furrowed.

Distribution. Banks of streams and on low river benches; western New Jersey (Bordentown, Burlington County); eastern Pennsylvania (Bucks County); near Arlington, Alexandria County, Great Falls, Fairfax County, Woodbridge, Prince William County, and Clifton Forge, Alleghany County, Virginia; near Easton, Monongalia County, West Virginia, and along the Appalachian Mountains up to altitudes of 2200° to northern Georgia; in northern Alabama (St. Bernard, Cullman County), and westward to eastern Kentucky, central Tennessee and through Ohio northward to Erie County; southern Indiana and Illinois (Richland County), to southeastern Missouri (Campbell, Dunklin County).

11. Fraxinus profunda Bush. Pumpkin Ash.

Leaves 9′—18′ long, with a stout tomentose petiole, and usually 7 but occasionally 9 lanceolate or elliptic entire or slightly serrate leaflets acuminate or abruptly long-pointed at apex, rounded, cuneate and often unsymmetric at base, coated below when they unfold with hoary tomentum, and pilose on the upper surface with short pale hairs, particularly on the midrib and veins, and at maturity thick and firm in texture, dark yellow-green and nearly glabrous on the upper surface, soft-pubescent on the lower surface, 5′—10′ long and 1½′—5′ wide, with a stout yellow midrib deeply impressed and puberulous above and numerous slender primary veins; petiolules stout, tomentose early in the season, usually becoming glabrous or nearly glabrous, ¼′—½′ or that of the terminal leaflet up to 2′ in length. Flowers diœcious, in elongated much-branched pubescent panicles, with oblong or oblong-obovate scarious bracts and bractlets; staminate flower with a minute campanulate obscurely 4-toothed calyx, and 2 or 3 stamens, with comparatively long slender filaments and oblong apiculate anthers; pistillate flower with a large deeply lobed calyx accrescent and persistent under the fruit, and an ovary gradually contracted into a slender style. Fruit in long drooping many-fruited pubescent clusters, oblong, 2′—3′ in length and often ½′ wide, the wing sometimes falcate, rounded, apiculate, or emarginate at apex, and decurrent to below the middle or nearly to the base of the thick terete many-rayed body.

A tree, occasionally 120° high, with a slender trunk 3° in diameter above the much enlarged and buttressed base, small spreading branches forming a narrow rather open head, and stout branchlets marked by large pale lenticels, coated at first with hoary tomentum, tomentose and pubescent during their first winter and light gray and pilose or glabrous the following year, and marked by the oblong slightly raised obconic leaf-scars nearly surrounding the lateral buds; usually much smaller. Winter-buds terminal, broad-ovate, obtuse, light reddish brown, and covered with close pale pubescence. Bark of the trunk ½′—¾′ thick, light gray and divided by shallow fissures into broad flat or rounded ridges broken on the surface into thin closely appressed scales.

Distribution. Deep river swamps often inundated during several months of the year; western New York (H. F. Sartwell); southern Indiana and Illinois; western Kentucky (Caldwell and McCracken Counties) and Tennessee (Henderson County); southeastern Missouri, eastern Arkansas (Moark and Corning, Clay County, and Varner, Lincoln County); near New Orleans, Louisiana, eastern Mississippi (near Columbus, Lowndes County), and in the valley of the lower Apalachicola River, western Florida.

Occasionally cultivated; hardy in the Arnold Arboretum.

12. Fraxinus pennsylvanica Marsh. Red Ash.

Leaves 10′—12′ long, with a stout slightly grooved pubescent petiole, and 7—9 oblong-lanceolate, ovate-elliptic or slightly obovate leaflets gradually narrowed at apex into a long slender point, unequally cuneate at base, and obscurely serrate, or often entire below the middle, when they unfold coated below and on the petiole with hoary tomentum, and lustrous and puberulous on the upper surface, and at maturity thin and firm, 4′—6′ long, 1′—1½′ wide, light yellow-green above and pale and covered below with silky pubescence, with a conspicuous midrib and branching veins; in the autumn turning yellow or rusty brown before falling; petiolules thick, grooved, pubescent, ⅛′—¼′ or that of the terminal leaflet up to 1′ in length. Flowers diœcious, appearing late in spring as the leaves begin to unfold, in a rather compact tomentose panicle, covered in the bud with ovate rusty-tomentose scales; staminate flower with a minute obscurely toothed cup-shaped calyx, and 2 stamens, with short slender filaments and linear-oblong light green anthers tinged with purple; calyx of the pistillate flower cup-shaped, deeply divided, as long as the ovary gradually narrowed into an elongated style divided at apex into 2 green stigmatic lobes. Fruit in an open glabrous or pubescent panicle, lanceolate to slightly oblanceolate or oblong-obovate or elliptic, 1′—2½′ long, ¼′—⅓′ wide, surrounded at base by the persistent calyx, the thin wing narrowed, rounded and occasionally emarginate or acute or acuminate and often apiculate at apex, decurrent to below the middle or nearly to the gradually tapering base of the slender terete many-rayed body.

A tree, 40°—60° high, with a trunk rarely exceeding 18′—20′ in diameter, stout upright branches forming a compact irregularly shaped head, and slender terete branchlets more or less coated when they first appear with pale tomentum sometimes persistent until their second or third year or often disappearing during the first summer, ultimately becoming ashy gray or light brown tinged with red, frequently covered with a glaucous bloom and marked by pale lenticels, and in their first winter by the semicircular leaf-scars displaying a short row of large fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds: terminal, about ⅛′ long, with 3 pairs of scales coated with rufous tomentum, those of the outer pair acute, rounded on the back, truncate at apex, and rather shorter than those of the other pairs 1′—1½′ long at maturity and sometimes pinnately cut toward the apex. Bark of the trunk ½′—⅔′ thick, brown tinged with red, and slightly furrowed, the surface of the ridges separating into thin appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, rather strong, brittle, coarse-grained, light brown, with thick lighter brown sapwood streaked with yellow; sometimes confounded commercially with the more valuable wood of the White Ash. Variable in the length of the petiolules and in the shape of the fruit and the width of its wing; a form with short-stalked or nearly sessile leaflets, found chiefly in Nebraska has been described as F. campestris Britt. and a form with the wing of the spatulate fruit sometimes ¼′ wide as F. Michauxii Britt.

Distribution. Low rich moist soil near the banks of streams and lakes; Nova Scotia to Manitoba, and southward to central Georgia, northern Alabama (St. Bernard, Cullman County, and Attalla, Etowah County), northeastern Mississippi (Tishomingo County), southern Indiana and Illinois, northern Missouri, eastern Kansas and southwestern Oklahoma (Cache, Comanche County); usually confined in the Carolinas to the Piedmont region and foothills of the high mountains. Passing into

Fraxinus pennsylvanica var. lanceolata Sarg. Green Ash.

Leaves with rather narrower and shorter and usually more sharply serrate leaflets lustrous and bright green on both surfaces, and glabrous or pubescent along the midrib below.

A round-topped tree, rarely more than 60° high, or with a trunk more than 2° in diameter, slender spreading branches, ashy gray terete glabrous branchlets marked by pale lenticels, and rusty-pubescent bud-scales.

Distribution. Banks of streams; valley of the Penobscot River (Orono, Penobscot County), Maine, to northern Vermont and the valley of the St. Lawrence River, near Montreal, Province of Quebec, and to the valley of the Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan), and in the United States westward to North Dakota, eastern Wyoming to the base of the Bighorn Mountains, and on the mountains of northern Montana, and southward to western Florida to the valley of the lower Apalachicola River, Dallas County, Alabama, central Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma to Comanche County, and Texas to the valley of the Guadalupe River; most abundant in the basin of the Mississippi River; attaining its largest size on the rich bottom-lands of eastern Texas and here often 60°—70° high, with a trunk 2°—3° in diameter; on the southern Appalachian Mountains ascending to altitudes of 2000°—2500°. As it usually grows in the east with its bright green glabrous leaves and glabrous branchlets the Green Ash appears distinct from the Red Ash, but trees occur over the area which it inhabits, but more often westward, with slightly pubescent leaves and branchlets which may be referred as well to one tree as to the other and make it impossible to distinguish satisfactorily as species the Green and Red Ash.

Often planted as a shade and ornamental tree in the middle western and occasionally in the eastern states, but less valuable than the White Ash.

13. Fraxinus Berlandieriana DC.

Leaves 3′—7′ long, with a slender petiole, and 3—5 lanceolate, elliptic or obovate leaflets, acuminate or abruptly acuminate or acute at apex, cuneate or rarely rounded at base, mostly entire or remotely serrate, thin, dark green and glabrous on the upper surface, rather paler and glabrous or furnished with small axillary tufts of white hairs on the lower surface, 3′—4′ long and ½′—1½′ wide; petiolules slender, 1¼′—1⅓′ or that of the terminal leaflet up to 1½′ in length. Flowers diœcious, in a short glabrous panicle inclosed in the bud by broad-ovate rounded chestnut-brown pubescent scales; staminate flower with a minute obscurely lobed calyx and 2 stamens, with short filaments and linear-oblong apiculate anthers; calyx of the pistillate flower cup-shaped, deeply divided, and as long as the ovary gradually narrowed into the slender style. Fruit ripening in May, oblong-obovate to spatulate, acute or acuminate at apex, 1′—1½′ long and ¼′ wide, the wing decurrent nearly to the base of the compressed many-rayed clavate body gradually narrowed into a long slender base surrounded by the enlarged deeply lobed calyx.

A tree, rarely more than 30° high, or with a trunk more than a foot in diameter, and terete slender branchlets light green when they first appear, becoming in their first winter light brown tinged with red or ashy gray, and marked by occasional lenticels and by the small elevated nearly circular leaf-scars displaying a short row of large fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds: terminal acute, with dark brown puberulous scales. Bark of the trunk dark gray tinged with red, 1′—1½′ thick, and divided by shallow interrupted fissures into narrow ridges. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. Texas, banks of streams and mountain cañons, valley of the Colorado River (Bastrop and Travis Counties), and those of the San Antonio and Nueces Rivers to the lower Rio Grande, and over the Edwards Plateau to Palo Pinto County; in northeastern Mexico.

14. Fraxinus velutina Torr.

Leaves 4′—5′ long, with a broad densely villose petiole grooved like the slender rachis on the upper side, and 3—5 elliptic to ovate or slightly obovate leaflets acute at apex, narrowed and rounded or cuneate at base, finely crenulate-serrate above the middle, pubescent above and tomentose below when they unfold, and at maturity thick, pale green, glabrous on the upper surface, tomentose on the lower surface, 1′—1½′ long and ¾′—1′ wide, with a prominent midrib and primary veins, and conspicuous reticulate veinlets; petiolules of the lateral leaflets ⅙′ or less or that of the terminal leaflet up to ½′ in length. Flowers diœcious, appearing in March and April with the unfolding of the leaves, on long slender pedicels in elongated pubescent panicles, covered in the bud by broad-ovate tomentose scales rounded at apex; calyx cup-shaped, densely pubescent; stamens, with short slender filaments and oblong apiculate anthers; ovary nearly inclosed in the calyx, shorter than the nearly sessile lobes of the stigma. Fruit ripening in September, on slender villose pedicels, in large many-fruited clusters, oblong-obovate to elliptic, surrounded at base by the enlarged deeply divided calyx, rarely more than ¾′ long and ⅙′ wide, the wing terminal, rounded and often emarginate or acute at apex, shorter than the terete many-rayed clavate body attenuate at base and /12′—½′ in length.

A slender tree, 25°—30°, rarely 40°—50° high, with a trunk 12′—18′ in diameter, stout often spreading branches forming a round-topped head, and slender terete branchlets coated during their first season with hoary tomentum, and ashy gray, glabrous and marked by large obcordate dark leaf-scars in their second year. Winter-buds: terminal acute, ⅛′ long, with 3 pairs of broad-ovate pointed tomentose scales, those of the inner pair strap-shaped and ½′ long when fully grown. Bark of the trunk ⅓′—½′ thick, gray slightly tinged with red, and deeply divided into broad flat broken ridges separating on the surface into small thin scales. Wood heavy, rather soft, not strong, close-grained, light brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood; used locally for axe-handles and in the manufacture of wagons.

Distribution. Mountain cañons up to altitudes of 6000°, central and southern Arizona and southern New Mexico. Passing into the following varieties: var. coriacea Rehd. (Fraxinus coriacea S. Wats.) differing in its thicker more coriaceous often more coarsely serrate leaflets and in the less densely pubescent or glabrescent branchlets; southern Utah (St. George, Washington County) to southeastern California; var. glabra Rehd. with glabrous 3—7-foliolate leaves and glabrous branchlets; common with the species; occasionally cultivated in the cities of Arizona; more distinct is

Fraxinus velutina var. Toumeyi Rehd.

Fraxinus Toumeyi Britt.

Leaves 3½′—6′ long, with a villose-pubescent petiole, and 5—7 lanceolate to elliptic or rarely obovate acuminate and long-pointed or acute leaflets, finely serrate above the middle, glabrous on the upper surface, covered on the lower surface with close fine pubescence, 1½′—3′ long and ½′—1′ wide; petiolules slender, pubescent, ⅛′—½′ or that of the terminal leaflet up to 1′ in length; occasionally on vigorous shoots reduced to a single leaflet. Flowers as in the species. Fruit narrow-oblong, 1′ long and often not more than /12′ wide, or spatulate with the wing longer or shorter than the body, and sometimes only about ¾′ long and /16′ wide, with the wing longer or not more than half the length of the body.

A tree, usually 20°—30° high, with a trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, and ashy gray branchlets pale pubescent when they first appear, becoming glabrous or puberulous during their second season.

Distribution. Mountain cañons at altitudes of 5000°—6000°; in Arizona more common than F. velutina; less abundant in southern New Mexico; in Sonora.

Often used to shade the streets in the towns of southern Arizona.

15. Fraxinus oregona Nutt.

Leaves 5′—14′ long, with a stout grooved and angled pubescent, tomentose or glabrous petiole, and usually 5—7, rarely 3, or on young trees occasionally 9, ovate to elliptic or rarely oval or obovate leaflets usually contracted at apex into a short broad point, gradually narrowed at base, and entire or remotely and obscurely serrate, usually coated below and on the petioles with thick pale tomentum when they unfold and pubescent above, or nearly glabrous or pilose with a few scattered hairs, and at maturity light green on the upper surface, paler and usually tomentose, puberulous or rarely glabrous (var. glabra Rehd.), on the lower surface, 3′—7′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, with a broad pale midrib, conspicuous veins arcuate near the margins, and reticulate veinlets, the lateral usually sessile, rarely on petiolules up to ½′, or that of the terminal leaflet up to 1′ in length; turning yellow or russet brown in the autumn before falling. Flowers diœcious, appearing in April or May when the leaves begin to unfold, in compact glabrous panicles covered in the bud by broad-ovate scales coated with rufous pubescence; staminate flower composed of a minute calyx, short filaments, and short-oblong apiculate anthers; calyx of the pistillate flower laciniately cut and shorter than the ovary narrowed into a stout style divided into long conspicuous stigmatic lobes. Fruit in ample crowded clusters, oblong, obovate to oblanceolate or elliptic, rounded and often emarginate or acute at apex, 1′—2′ long and ¼′—⅓′ wide, the wing decurrent to the middle or nearly to the attenuate base of the clavate or ellipsoid slightly compressed many-rayed body.

A tree, frequently 70°—80° high, with a long trunk occasionally 4° in diameter, stout branches forming a narrow upright head or a broad shapely crown, and thick terete branchlets more or less densely coated with pale or rarely rufous silky pilose tomentum persistent during their second year or occasionally deciduous during their first summer, becoming light red-brown or orange color, glabrous or puberulous, often covered with a slight glaucous bloom, marked by small remote pale lenticels, and during their first and second winters by the large elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars displaying a short row of conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars, rarely always glabrous (var. glabra Rehd.). Winter-buds: terminal acute, ⅛′—¼′ long, with 4 pairs of scales covered with pale hairs or with rusty pubescence, those of the inner rows often foliaceous at maturity. Bark of the trunk 1′—1½′ thick, dark gray, or brown slightly tinged with red, and deeply divided by interrupted fissures into broad flat ridges separating on the surface into thin scales. Wood light, hard, brittle, coarse-grained, brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood; largely used in the manufacture of furniture, for the frames of carriages and wagons, in cooperage, the interior finish of houses, and for fuel.

Distribution. Usually in rich moist soil in the neighborhood of streams; coast region of southern British Columbia, southward through western Washington and Oregon and the California coast region to the Bay of San Francisco and the Santa Cruz Mountains, and along the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada to those of the mountains of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties, California; the var. glabra in Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, and east of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County (Ash Creek, near Owens Lake), and occasionally northward in California; most abundant and of its largest size on the bottom-lands of the rivers of southwestern Oregon; one of the most valuable of the deciduous-leaved timber-trees of Pacific North America.

Occasionally cultivated; hardy in the Arnold Arboretum.

16. Fraxinus quadrangulata Michx. Blue Ash.

Leaves 8′—12′ long, with a slender petiole glabrous, or puberulous toward the base, and 5—11 oblong-ovate to lanceolate long-pointed coarsely serrate leaflets unequally rounded or cuneate at base, and coated when they unfold on the lower surface with thick brown tomentum, and at maturity thick and firm, yellow-green and glabrous above, pale and glabrous or sometimes furnished with tufts of pale hairs along the base of the conspicuous midrib below, 3′—5′ long and 1′—2′ wide, with short stout petiolules and 8—12 pairs of veins arcuate near the margins; turning pale yellow in the autumn before falling. Flowers perfect, appearing as the terminal buds begin to expand, in loose-branched panicles from small obtuse buds with scales keeled on the back, apiculate at apex, and covered with thick brown tomentum; calyx reduced to an obscure ring; corolla 0; stamens 2, with nearly sessile broad connectives and dark purple oblong obtuse anther-cells; ovary oblong-ovoid, gradually narrowed into a short style divided at apex into 2 light purple stigmatic lobes generally maturing and withering before the anthers open. Fruit oblong to oblong-cuneate, 1′—2′ long and ⅓′—½′ wide, the wing rounded and often emarginate or acute at apex, surrounding the flat body faintly many-rayed on both surfaces.

A tree, usually 60°—70° or occasionally 120° high, with a trunk 2°—3° in diameter, small spreading branches forming a slender head, and stout 4-angled branchlets more or less 4-winged between the nodes, dark orange color and covered with short rufous pubescence when they first appear, becoming gray tinged with red in their second year and marked by scattered pale lenticels and by the large elevated obcordate leaf-scars displaying a lunate row of fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and in their third year light brown or ashy gray and then gradually becoming terete. Winter-buds: terminal about ¼′ long, with 3 pairs of scales, those of the outer row thick, rounded on the back, usually obscurely pinnate toward the apex, dark reddish brown, slightly puberulous or often hoary-tomentose, partly covering the bud, those of the inner rows strap-shaped, coated with light brown tomentum, often pinnate, becoming 1′—1½′ long. Bark of the trunk ½′—⅔′ thick, irregularly divided into large plate-like scales, the light gray surface slightly tinged with red separating into thin minute scales. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, rather brittle, light yellow streaked with brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood of 80—90 layers of annual growth; largely used for flooring and in carriage-building, and not often distinguished commercially from that of other species of the northern and middle states. A blue dye is obtained by macerating the inner bark in water.

Distribution. Rich limestone hills, occasionally descending into the bottom-lands of fertile valleys; southwestern Ontario through southern Michigan to southwestern Iowa and southward through western Ohio and southeastern Indiana to eastern and central Kentucky (near Clarksville, Montgomery County), eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama (near Huntsville, Madison County), and through Missouri to southeastern Kansas, southwestern Arkansas and northeastern Oklahoma (near Pawhuska, Osage County); nowhere very abundant; of its largest size in the basin of the lower Wabash River, Illinois, and on the western slopes of the Big Smoky Mountains, Tennessee.

Occasionally cultivated as an ornament of parks and gardens in the eastern United States.

17. Fraxinus nigra Marsh. Black Ash. Brown Ash.

Leaves 12′—16′ long, with a stout pale petiole, and 7—11 oblong or oblong-lanceolate long-pointed leaflets, unequally cuneate or sometimes rounded at base, serrate with small incurved apiculate teeth, the lateral sessile, the terminal on a petiolule up to 1′ in length, covered especially below when they unfold with rufous hairs, and at maturity thin and firm, dark green above, paler below, glabrous with the exception of occasional tufts of rufous hairs along the under side of the broad pale midrib, 4′—5′ long and 1′—2′ wide, with many conspicuous primary veins arcuate near the margins and obscurely reticulate veinlets; turning rusty brown and falling early in the autumn. Flowers polygamous, without a perianth, appearing before the leaves in a compact or ultimately elongated panicle 4′—5′ long, and covered in the bud by broad-ovate dark brown or nearly black scales rounded at apex; staminate flowers on separate trees or mixed with perfect flowers, and consisting of 2 large deeply pitted oblong dark purple apiculate anthers attached on the back to short broad filaments; pistillate flower consisting of a long slender style deeply divided into 2 broad purple stigmas and often accompanied by 1 or 2 perfect or globose rudimentary pink anthers sessile or borne on long or short filaments. Fruit in open panicles 8′—10′ in length, oblong to slightly oblong-obovate, 1′—1½′ long and ⅓′ wide, with a thin wing, surrounding the short flat faintly nerved body, rounded and emarginate at apex and narrowed and rounded or cuneate at base.

A tree, occasionally 80°—90° high, with a tall trunk rarely exceeding 20′ in diameter, slender mostly upright branches forming a narrow head, and stout terete branchlets dark green and slightly puberulous when they first appear, soon becoming ashy gray or orange color and marked by large pale lenticels, growing darker during their first winter and then roughened by the large suborbicular leaf-scars displaying a semicircular row of conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars; usually much smaller. Winter-buds: terminal broad-ovate, acute, rather less than ¼′ long, with 3 pairs of scales, those of the outer pair thick and rounded on the back at base, gradually narrowed and acute at apex, dark brown, slightly puberulous, falling as the bud begins to enlarge in the spring, and shorter than the scales of the inner rows coated on the outer surface with rufous pubescence, those of the second pair becoming strap-shaped, 1′ long, ⅓′ wide, and about half as long as the pinnate usually foliaceous inner scales. Bark of the trunk gray slightly tinged with red, ⅓′—½′ thick, and divided into large irregular plates separating into thin papery scales. Wood heavy, rather soft, not strong, tough, coarse-grained, durable, easily separable into thin layers, dark brown, with thin light brown often nearly white sapwood; largely used for the interior finish of houses and in cabinet-making, and for fences, barrel hoops, and in the manufacture of baskets.

Distribution. Deep cold swamps and the low banks of streams and lakes; southern Newfoundland and the northern shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Lake Winnipeg, and southward to New Castle County, Delaware, the mountains of West Virginia, southwestern Indiana (Knox County; now probably exterminated by drainage), central Iowa, central Missouri, and northwestern Arkansas.

2. Forestiera Poir. Swamp Privet.

Adelia Michx.

Trees or shrubs, with thin close bark, slender branchlets, and small scaly buds. Leaves simple, entire or serrulate, petiolate, deciduous or persistent. Flowers diœcious or polygamous, minute, on slender ebracteolate pedicels, in fascicles or panicles, their bracts caducous, from buds in the axils of leaves of the previous year and covered with numerous scales; calyx reduced to a narrow ring or cup-shaped, 5 or 6-lobed; corolla 0; stamens hypogynous; filaments 2—4; anthers ovoid, opening by lateral slits; ovary 2-celled, gradually narrowed into a slender style terminating in an abruptly enlarged 2-lobed stigma; ovules 2 in each cell, suspended from its apex; raphe dorsal. Fruit 1 or very rarely 2-celled, drupaceous, oblong or subglobose, with thin flesh and a thin-walled stone; seed 1 in each cell, pendulous, testa membranaceous; albumen fleshy; cotyledons plane, nearly filling the cavity of the stone.

Forestiera with 14 species is distributed from the southern United States and Mexico through Central America to Paraguay, and through the West Indies to Brazil.

The generic name is in memory of the French physician and botanist Charles Leforestière.

1. Forestiera acuminata Poir.

Leaves elliptic, acuminate and long-pointed at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, serrate above the middle with small remote incurved teeth, glabrous with the exception of occasional hairs on the upper side of the slender midrib, yellow-green on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 2½′—4½′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, with usually 5 or 6 pairs of slender primary veins and slightly thickened and incurved margins, deciduous; petioles slender, often slightly winged above the middle, ¼′—½′ in length. Flowers appearing in April and May before the leaves from ovoid pointed buds ⅛′ long, with thickened pale chestnut-brown scales; calyx reduced to a narrow slightly lobed ring; corolla 0; staminate in many-flowered fascicles, on short pedicels from the axils of broad-obovate thin yellow apiculate conspicuous bracts; stamens 4, on long slender filaments; anthers bright yellow; ovary reduced to a minute ovoid body; pistillate flowers on slender pedicels ⅛′ long, in glabrous pedunculate several-flowered panicles ¾′—1¼′ long, their bracts caducous; stamens with shorter filaments and abortive or rarely fertile anthers, or usually 0; ovary oblong-ovoid, slightly unsymmetric, gradually narrowed into the long slender style enlarged into the thickened imperfectly 2-lobed terminal stigma. Fruit falling as soon as ripe in June and July, oblong-ovoid, gradually narrowed, acute and tipped with the remnants of the style at apex, gradually narrowed and rounded at base, slightly compressed and unsymmetric, dark blue-purple, 1′—1¼′ long, about ¼′ thick, with thin dry flesh, and a striate stone rounded at base, straight on one side and rounded on the other, its wall covered with thin vertical scales spongy in appearance, and conspicuously longitudinally ridged on the inner surface the ridges terminating in long slender tips forming the acuminate apex of the stone; seeds ellipsoid, slightly compressed, striate, light brown, about ⅓′ in length.

A tree, rarely 50° high, with a short trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, small spreading branches, and slender light brown branchlets becoming darker in their second year, and marked by numerous lenticels and by the small elevated nearly orbicular leaf-scars. Winter-buds: terminal ovoid, pointed, about /16′ long, with numerous scales increasing in size from the outer to the inner ranks; usually much smaller, and generally a shrub 10°—15° high and broad. Bark close, slightly ridged, dark brown.

Distribution. Borders of streams and swamps in low moist soil; valley of the lower Wabash River, southwestern Indiana, southern Illinois northward along the Mississippi River to Pike County, and to central Tennessee, and from southern Missouri through Arkansas to eastern Oklahoma (near Muskogee, Muskogee County) and eastern Texas to the valley of the lower Colorado River inland to Colorado County (shores of Eagle Lake), and through Louisiana, central and southern Mississippi and Alabama to western Florida (Branford, Suwanee County) and on the Savannah River, near Augusta, Richmond County, Georgia; most abundant in Missouri, Arkansas and Texas; comparatively rare east of the Mississippi River, but probably of its largest size in eastern Louisiana.

Occasionally cultivated; hardy in the Arnold Arboretum.

3. Chionanthus L.

Trees or shrubs, with stout terete or slightly angled branchlets, thick pith, and buds with numerous opposite scales. Leaves simple, conduplicate in the bud, deciduous. Flowers diœcious or rarely polygamous, on elongated ebracteolate pedicels, in 3-flowered clusters terminal on the slender opposite branches, of ample loose panicles, with foliaceous persistent bracts, from separate buds in the axils of the upper leaves of the previous year; calyx minute, deeply 4-parted, the divisions imbricated in the bud, persistent under the fruit; corolla white, deeply divided into 4 or rarely 5 or 6 elongated linear lobes conduplicate-valvate in the bud, united at base into a short tube, or rarely separate; stamens 2, inserted on the base of the corolla opposite the axis of the flower, or rarely 4 in the staminate flower, included; filaments terete, short; anthers ovoid, attached on the back below the middle, apiculate by the elongation of the connective, 2-celled, the cells opening by longitudinal lateral or subextrorse slits; ovary ovoid, abruptly contracted into a short columnar style; stigma thick and fleshy, slightly 2-lobed; in the staminate flower of the Asiatic species reduced to a minute subglobose body; ovules laterally attached near the apex of the cell; raphe ventral. Fruit an ovoid or oblong, usually 1 or rarely 2 or 3-seeded thick-skinned drupe tipped with the remnants of the style; flesh thin and dry, stone thick-walled, crustaceous. Seed filling the cavity of the stone, ovoid; seed-coat chestnut-brown.

Chionanthus inhabits the middle and southern United States with one species, and northern and central China with another.

The specific name, from χιών and ἄνθος, is in allusion to the light and graceful clusters of snow-white flowers.

1. Chionanthus virginica L. Fringe-tree. Old Man’s Beard.

Leaves ovate or oblong, acuminate, short-pointed or sometimes rounded at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate below, entire, with undulate margins, and coarsely reticulate-venulose, yellow-green and lustrous above, pubescent below, and ciliate on the margins when they unfold, and at maturity 4′—8′ long, ½′—4′ wide, thick and firm, dark green on the upper surface, pale and glabrous on the lower surface except on the stout midrib and conspicuous arcuate primary veins more or less covered with short white hairs; turning bright clear yellow before falling early in the autumn; petioles stout, puberulous, ½′—1′ in length. Flowers slightly and agreeably fragrant, appearing when the leaves are about one third grown, in loose pubescent drooping panicles 4′—6′ in length, the bracts at the base of the lower branches of the inflorescence oblong, glabrous on the upper surface, pubescent on the lower surface, and sometimes 1′ long, those at the base of the upper branches oval, successively smaller, and gradually passing into the minute laciniate bracts subtending the lateral pedicels of the 3-flowered clusters terminating the last divisions of the panicle; some individuals bearing occasional perfect flowers among others functionally diœcious, some with sterile or rarely perfect anthers and a well-developed stigma, and others with an imperfectly developed stigma and fertile anthers; calyx light green, glabrous, with acute entire or laciniately cut lobes; corolla 1′ long, marked on the inner surface near the base by a row of bright purple spots; anthers light yellow, with a green connective. Fruit ripening in September, in loose few-fruited clusters, their bracts leaf-like and sometimes 2′ in length, oval or short-oblong, 1′ long, dark blue or nearly black, and often covered with a glaucous bloom; seeds ⅓′ long, ovoid, narrowed at apex and covered with a thin light chestnut-brown coat marked by reticulate veins radiating from the hilum.

A tree, 20°—30° high, with a short trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, stout ashy gray or light brown branches forming an oblong rather narrow head, and stout branchlets light green and covered with pale pubescence or sometimes glabrous when they first appear, terete or slightly angled in their first winter, often much thickened below the nodes, light brown or orange color, and marked by large scattered darker colored lenticels and by the elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars displaying a semicircular row of conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars; often a shrub, with several stout thick spreading stems. Winter-buds broad-ovoid, acute, ⅛′ long, with about 5 pairs of scales increasing in length from the outer to the inner pair, ovate, acute, keeled on the back, light brown and slightly pilose on the outer surface, bright green and lustrous on the inner surface, and ciliate on the margins with scattered white hairs, those of the inner pair at maturity obovate, gradually narrowed below, foliaceous, and 1′—1½′ long. Bark of the trunk ¼′—½′ thick, and irregularly divided into small thin appressed brown scales tinged with red. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, and light brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood. The bark is tonic and is sometimes used in decoctions and in the treatment of intermittent fevers, or as an aperient and diuretic, and in homœopathic practice.

Distribution. Banks of streams in rich moist soil; southeastern Pennsylvania to the Manitee River region, western Florida, and through the Gulf states to northern Arkansas (Baxter and Cleburne Counties), southwestern Oklahoma (near Page, Leflore County) and the valley of the Brazos River, Texas; ascending on the southern Appalachian Mountains to altitudes of 4000°.

Often cultivated as an ornamental plant in the eastern United States, and in western and central Europe.

4. Osmanthus Lour.

Trees or shrubs, with terete or slightly angled branches, and fibrous roots. Leaves simple, persistent. Flowers fragrant, polygamo-diœcious or perfect, on ebracteolate pedicels subtended by scale-like bracts, in short axillary racemes or in short axillary or rarely terminal fascicles; calyx minute, 4-toothed or divided, the divisions imbricated in the bud, persistent under the fruit; corolla tubular, 4-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud, ovate, obtuse, spreading after anthesis; stamens 2, inserted on the tube of the corolla opposite the lateral lobes of the calyx, or rarely 4; filaments terete, short; anthers ovoid or linear-oblong, blunt, or apiculate by the prolongation of the connective, attached on the back below the middle, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally by marginal slits, sometimes rudimentary or 0 in the pistillate flower; ovary subglobose; style columnar, short or elongated, crowned with an entire capitate stigma; ovules laterally attached near the apex of the cell; raphe ventral. Fruit a fleshy 1-seeded ovoid or globose drupe tipped with the remnants of the style; flesh thin and succulent; stone hard and bony. Seed filling the cavity of the stone; cotyledons flat, much longer than the short superior radicle turned toward the hilum.

Osmanthus with ten species inhabits eastern North America, the Hawaiian Islands, Polynesia, Japan, China, and the Himalayas. Osmanthus fragrans Lour., a native of China and the temperate Himalayas, is cultivated in China for its fragrant minute cream-colored or yellow flowers used by the Chinese to perfume tea, and is everywhere a favorite garden plant.

The generic name, from ὀσμή and ἄνθος, relates to the fragrance of the flowers.

1. Osmanthus americanus B. & H. Devil Wood.

Leaves oblong-lanceolate or obovate, acute or rarely rounded and occasionally emarginate at apex, and gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, with thickened revolute margins, when they unfold coated beneath with pale tomentum, and at maturity thick and coriaceous, glabrous, bright green, lustrous above, obscurely reticulate-venulose, 4′—5′ long and ½′—2½′ wide, with a broad pale midrib and remote forked primary veins arcuate near the margins; persistent until their second year; petioles stout, ½′—¾′ in length. Flowers opening in March from pilose inflorescence-buds formed the previous autumn in the axils of the leaves of the year, the staminate, pistillate, and perfect flowers on different individuals in 3-flowered clusters, sessile or short-pedicellate, in pedunculate cymes or short racemes, with scale-like nearly triangular acute persistent bracts; calyx puberulous, with acute rigid lobes, and much shorter than the creamy white corolla ⅛′ long when expanded, with an elongated tube and short spreading ovate rounded lobes; stamens inserted on the middle of the tube of the corolla, included or slightly exserted, small and often rudimentary in the pistillate flower; ovary abruptly contracted into a stout columnar style crowned with a large exserted capitate stigma, reduced in the staminate flower to a minute point. Fruit ripening early in the autumn, oblong or obovoid, 1′ long, dark blue, with thin flesh and a thick or sometimes thin-walled brittle ovoid pointed stone; seed ovoid, covered with a chestnut-brown coat marked by broad conspicuous pale veins radiating from the short broad ventral hilum and encircling the seed.

A tree, occasionally 60°—70° high, with a trunk sometimes a foot in diameter, and slender slightly angled ultimately terete branchlets light or red-brown and marked by minute pale lenticels, becoming ashy gray in their second year and roughened by the small elevated orbicular leaf-scars displaying a ring of minute fibro-vascular bundle-scars; usually much smaller and often shrubby. Winter-buds narrow-lanceolate, ½′ long, with 2 thick lanceolate reddish brown puberulous scales. Bark of the trunk thin, dark gray or gray tinged with red, and roughened by small thin appressed scales displaying in falling the dark cinnamon red inner bark. Wood heavy, very hard and strong, close-grained, difficult to work, dark brown, with thick light brown or yellow sapwood.

Distribution. Usually in moist soil near the borders of streams and Pine-barren ponds and swamps, and occasionally on dry sandy uplands; coast region of the south Atlantic and Gulf states, from the valley of the lower Cape Fear River, North Carolina, to the valley of the Kissimmee River, the interior of the peninsular (Lake and Orange Counties) and the shores of Tampa Bay, Florida, and westward to eastern Louisiana.

LXI. Borraginaceæ.

Scabrous-pubescent trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and terete branchlets. Leaves simple, alternate or subverticillate, penniveined, persistent or tardily deciduous, without stipules. Flowers regular, perfect, in terminal or axillary dichotomous often scorpioid-branched cymes; calyx usually 5-lobed, persistent under the fruit; corolla hypogynous, 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens 5, inserted on the tube of the corolla opposite its lobes; filaments filiform; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; pistil of 2 carpels; ovary undivided (in the arborescent genera of the United States), sessile on the hypogynous inconspicuous disk, more or less completely 4-celled; style single, 2-branched or parted toward the apex; stigmas clavate or capitate; ovule solitary in each cell. Fruit drupaceous (in the arborescent genera of the United States), tipped with the remnants of the style, with 2—4 nutlets or cells. Seeds ascending; seed-coat membranaceous.

The Borage family with ninety-five genera, mostly of herbaceous plants, is widely distributed and most abundant in temperate regions, especially in the Mediterranean basin and central Asia.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Genera of the United States.

Branches of the style 2-branched; fruit partly or entirely inclosed in the enlarged calyx.

1. Cordia.

Branches of the style not branched; fruit not inclosed in the calyx.

Calyx valvately splitting into 5 minute teeth; fruit with 2—4 1-seeded nutlets.

2. Beureria.

Calyx 5-parted or cleft, the divisions imbricated in the bud; fruit with 2 2-seeded nutlets.

3. Ehretia.

1. Cordia L.

Trees or shrubs, with petiolate entire persistent leaves and naked buds. Flowers in terminal scorpioid-branched cymes; calyx tubular or campanulate, conspicuously many-ribbed or rayed, the teeth valvate in the bud; corolla funnel form; anthers oblong-ovate; ovary 4-celled; style slender, elongated, 2-branched above the middle, the branches 2-parted, their division stigmatic to the base; ovule ascending, laterally attached below the middle to the inner angle of the cell, suborthotropous; micropyle superior. Fruit entirely or partly inclosed in the thickened calyx; flesh dry and corky or sweet and juicy; stone thick-walled, hard and bony, 1—4-celled, usually 1 or 2-seeded. Seeds without albumen; embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons thick and fleshy or membranaceous, longitudinally plicate or corrugated, much shorter than the superior radicle turned toward the hilum.

Cordia with two hundred and fifty species inhabits the tropical and warm extratropical regions of the two hemispheres, the largest number of species being American. Of the four species found within the territory of the United States two are trees. Some of the species are valuable timber-trees, and others are cultivated for their edible fruits.

The generic name is in honor of Valerius Cordus (1515—1544), the German writer on pharmacy and botany.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Species of the United States.

Corolla orange or flame color; fruit inclosed in the smooth glabrous thickened ivory-white calyx; leaves ovate.

1. C. Sebestena (D).

Corolla white with a yellow centre; fruit entirely or partly inclosed in the thin many-ribbed tomentose orange-brown calyx; leaves oval or oblong-ovate.

2. C. Boissieri (E, H).

1. Cordia Sebestena L. Geiger-tree.

Leaves unfolding through a large part of the year, ovate, short-pointed or rounded at apex, rounded, subcordate, or cuneate at base, entire or remotely and coarsely serrate above the middle, covered when they unfold, like the branches of the inflorescence, the outside of the calyx, and the young branchlets, with thick dense rusty tomentum and with short rigid pale hairs, and at maturity thick and firm, dark green, scabrous-pubescent, or often nearly glabrous below, reticulate-venulose, 5′—6′ long and 3′—4′ wide, with a broad midrib usually covered below with pale hairs, especially in the axils of remote primary veins connected by conspicuous cross veinlets; petioles stout, pubescent, 1′—1½′ in length. Flowers appearing throughout the year on slender pedicels, in open flat cymes 6′—7′ in diameter, some individuals producing flowers with short included stamens and elongated styles, and others with exserted stamens and included styles; calyx tubular, ½′—⅔′ long, and obscurely many-rayed, with short nearly triangular rigid teeth; corolla orange or flame color, puberulous on the outer surface, with a slender tube about twice as long as the calyx and spreading rounded lobes, irregularly undulate on the margins and 1′—1½′ in diameter when fully expanded; ovary conic, glabrous, contracted into a slender style branched near the apex. Fruit broad-ovate, rather abruptly narrowed and pointed at apex, concave at base, 1¼′—1½′ long and about ¾′ broad, inclosed in the thickened fibrous calyx smooth and ivory-white on the outer surface; flesh thin, pale, and corky, separable from the irregularly sulcate thick-walled stone gradually narrowed and acuminate at apex, and deeply lobed at base; seeds linear-lanceolate, ½′ long, with a delicate white seed-coat.

A tree, in Florida 25°—30° high, with a tall trunk 5′—6′ in diameter, slender upright branches forming a narrow close round-topped head, and stout branchlets with thick pith, dark green at first, becoming ashy gray and marked by large nearly orbicular cordate leaf-scars displaying 2 central circular clusters of fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Bark of the trunk ½′—¾′ thick, dark brown, frequently nearly black, and deeply and irregularly divided into narrow ridges broken on the surface into short thick appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, dark brown, with thick light brown or yellow sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, Flamingo near Cape Sable (A. A. Eaton) and Madeira Hammock, Munroe County, and on the southern keys; on the Bahama Islands, on most of the Antilles, and in Guiana and New Granada.

Often planted in tropical countries as an ornament of gardens.

2. Cordia Boissieri A. DC. Anacahuita.

Leaves oval to oblong-ovate, acute or rounded at apex, rounded or subcordate at base, entire or obscurely crenulate-serrate, covered when they unfold like the branches of the inflorescence, both surfaces of the calyx and the young branchlets with rusty or dark brown tomentum and short white usually matted hairs, thick and firm, dark green, minutely rugose and more or less scabrous above, coated below with thick soft pale or rufous tomentum, 4′—5′ long and 3′—4′ wide, with a broad midrib, and conspicuous primary veins forked near the margins and connected by cross veinlets; deciduous at the end of their first year; petioles stout, tomentose, 1′—1½′ in length. Flowers opening from April to June, slightly fragrant, sessile or short-pedicellate, in open terminal dichotomous cymes; calyx tubular or subcampanulate, conspicuously many-ribbed, with 5 linear acute teeth, and about half as long as the tube of the white corolla puberulous on the outer surface, marked in the throat by a large light yellow spot, the lobes rounded, imbricated in the bud, and 2′ across when fully expanded; ovary glabrous, gradually narrowed into a slender 2-branched style. Fruit ovoid, 1′ long, about ¾′ broad, pointed at apex, lustrous, bright red-brown, and inclosed entirely or partly by the thin fibrous now conspicuously rayed orange-brown calyx coated on the outer surface with thick short pale tomentum, and often splitting nearly to the base; flesh thin, sweet, and pulpy, separating easily from the ovoid smooth light brown stone gradually narrowed from above the middle, faintly reticulate-veined, and marked by 4 longitudinal lines and at the acuminate apex by a deeply 4-lobed thin cap, thick-walled, hard and bony, deeply lobed at base; seeds ovoid, acute, ¼′ long, with a thin delicate pure white coat.

A tree, occasionally 20°—25° high, with a short often crooked trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, stout spreading branches forming a low round-topped head, and stout branchlets, becoming in their second year dark gray or brown, slightly puberulous, and marked by occasional large lenticels and by elevated obcordate leaf-scars; or often a shrub, with numerous stems sometimes only 2° or 3° tall. Bark of the trunk thin, gray tinged with red, and irregularly divided into broad flat ridges, the surface ultimately separating into long thin papery scales. Wood light, rather soft, close-grained, and dark brown, with thick light brown sapwood.

Distribution. Dry limestone ridges, and depressions in the desert; valley of the Rio Grande, Texas, and southern New Mexico, southward into Mexico; most abundant and of its largest size in Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon between the mouth of the Rio Grande and the base of the Sierra Madre.

2. Beureria Jacq.

Trees or shrubs, with oblong-obovate or ovate leaves involute in the bud, persistent. Flowers on slender bracteolate pedicels, in terminal corymbose many-flowered cymes, with linear-lanceolate caducous bracts and bractlets; calyx campanulate, 5-toothed, the divisions closed and valvate in the bud; corolla white, campanulate, the lobes broad-ovate, spreading after anthesis; anthers ovoid, rugulose, apiculate; ovary incompletely 4-celled by the development of the 2 parietal placentas, narrowed into a terminal style 2-parted at apex, the divisions more or less coalescent; stigmas capitate; ovules attached on the back near the middle of the inner face of the revolute placentas, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit subglobose, flesh thin; stone somewhat 4-lobed and separable into 4 thick-walled bony 1-seeded nutlets rounded and furnished on the back with a thick spongy longitudinal many-ridged appendage, flattened on their converging inner faces and attached at apex to a filiform column. Seed terete, filling the seminal cell, longitudinally incurved round a rather small cavity opposite an elevated oblong scar on one of the inner faces of the nutlet and connected with the hilum by a narrow passage; seed-coat membranaceous, light brown; embryo axile in fleshy albumen; cotyledons plane; radicle slender, elongated, turned toward the hilum.

Beureria with forty species is confined to tropical America, two species reaching the shores of southern Florida; of these one is a tree and the other Beureria revoluta H. B. K. is an arborescent shrub.

The generic name is in honor of J. A. Beurer, an apothecary at Nuremberg.

1. Beureria ovata Meyers.

Beureria havanensis Hitch., not Meyers.

Leaves elliptic to oval or broad-obovate, acute and often apiculate or rounded and then occasionally emarginate at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base entire, densely covered when they unfold with white caducous hairs, and at maturity thick, dark yellow-green and lustrous above, paler below, 2½′—3′ long and 1¼′—2′ wide, with slightly thickened undulate margins, a slender, orange-colored midrib, thin primary veins and conspicuous reticulate veinlets more prominent above than below; usually persistent through their second summer; petioles slender, covered when they first appear like the very young branchlets with long white hairs, very soon glabrous, ½′—1′ in length. Flowers opening in spring and late in autumn on pedicels ½′ long and furnished near the middle with an acuminate scarious bractlet ¼′ in length and caducous from a persistent base, in open glabrous 15—20-flowered long-stalked cymes 3′—4′ in diameter, with slender branches, and small bracts; calyx gradually narrowed into a stipe-like base, the lobes acuminate, ciliate on the margins; corolla subcampanulate, creamy white, with a short tube somewhat enlarged in the throat, and broad-ovate spreading lobes ¾′ across when expanded; stamens rather longer than the tube of the corolla, anthers much shorter than the filaments; ovary conic, glabrous, gradually contracted into a slender exserted style divided only toward the apex or sometimes nearly entire, and crowned with 2 capitate stigmas. Fruit ripening in early autumn or early spring from autumnal flowers, bright orange-red, ½′ in diameter, with a thick tough skin and thin dry flesh inclosing the 4 nutlets, the enlarged spreading calyx becoming sometimes ½′ across.

A tree, in Florida occasionally 40°—50° high, with a buttressed and often fluted trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, and slender branchlets light red and pilose with caducous hairs when they first appear, becoming in their first winter dark red, orange color or ashy gray, and sometimes roughened by pale lenticels, their thin bark often separating into delicate scales; usually much smaller and often a shrub, with numerous spreading stems. Winter-buds minute, globose, covered with hoary tomentum, nearly immersed in the bark. Bark of the trunk /16′—⅛′ thick, light brown tinged with red, more or less fissured and divided on the surface into thick plate-like irregular scales. Wood hard, strong, very close-grained, brown streaked with orange, with thick hardly distinguishable sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, Cocoanut Grove, Dade County (Miss O. Rodham), and on the southern keys; common; on the Bahama Islands and on many of the Antilles.

3. Ehretia P. Br.

Trees or shrubs, with entire or dentate leaves, and scaly buds. Flowers small, in terminal and axillary scorpioid clusters; calyx open or closed in the bud, the divisions imbricated, ovate or linear; corolla usually white, with a short or cylindric tube and spreading obtuse lobes; ovary oblong-conic, 1-celled before anthesis, becoming incompletely 4-celled by the development of the 2 parietal placentas; style columnar, parted into 2 divisions terminating in capitate stigmas; ovules attached laterally near the middle on the inner face of the revolute placentas, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit fleshy, small, globose, with thin flesh; stone separable into 2 2-celled thick-walled bony nutlets rounded on the back, plane on the inner face, and attached to a thin axile column. Seed terete, usually erect, filling the longitudinally incurved seminal cavity; seed-coat thin, membranaceous, light brown; embryo axile in thin albumen; cotyledons ovate, plane, shorter than the elongated superior radicle turned toward the hilum.

Ehretia with about forty species is widely distributed through tropical and warm extratropical regions of the two hemispheres, with a single species extending into southeastern Texas.

The generic name commemorates the artistic and scientific labors of the German botanical artist, George Dionysius Ehret (1708—1770).

1. Ehretia elliptica DC. Anaqua. Knackaway.

Leaves oval or oblong, pointed and apiculate at apex, gradually rounded or cuneate at base, entire or occasionally furnished above the middle with a few broad teeth, conspicuously reticulate-venulose, unfolding late in winter and then thin, light green, lustrous, minutely tuberculate and pilose above, and covered below like the branches of the inflorescence, the outer surface of the calyx, and the young branchlets with rigid pale hairs, often furnished with axillary tufts of white hairs, and at maturity subcoriaceous, dark green and roughened on the upper surface by the enlarged circular crowded pale tubercles, and more or less covered with soft pale or rufous pubescence on the lower surface, especially on the narrow midrib, and numerous primary veins arcuate near the margins; irregularly deciduous during the winter; petioles stout, grooved, pubescent, ⅛′—¼′ in length. Flowers opening from autumn to early spring, in compact racemose scorpioid-branched panicles 2′—3′ long and broad, on short leafy branches of the year, with linear acute deciduous bracts about ¼′ long; calyx open in the bud, divided to the base into 5 linear acute divisions and nearly as long as the campanulate tube of the corolla, with ovate thin white lobes ½′ across when expanded. Fruit ripening in autumn and spring, light yellow, ¼′ in diameter, with thin sweet rather juicy edible flesh, and 2 2-seeded nutlets.

A tree, sometimes 40°—50° high, with a trunk occasionally 3° in diameter, stout spreading branches forming a handsome compact round-topped head, and slender branchlets, without a terminal bud, covered when they first appear, like the under surface of the leaves, the branches of the inflorescence, and the outer surface of the calyx of the flower, with rigid hirsute pale hairs, becoming in their first winter light brown tinged with red, sometimes puberulous, often roughened by numerous pale lenticels, and by small depressed obcordate leaf-scars displaying a short lunate row of fibro-vascular bundle-scars; usually much smaller within the territory of the United States, and often a low shrub. Winter-buds: axillary, minute, 1 or 2 together, superposed, buried in the bark, and covered by 2 pairs of dark scales persistent on the base of the growing branchlet and at maturity acute, dark chestnut-brown, coated with pale hairs, and sometimes ¼′ in length. Bark of young stems and of the branches thin, light brown, and broken into thick appressed scales, becoming on old trunks sometimes 1′ thick, deeply furrowed and divided into long thick irregular plate-like scales gray or reddish brown on the surface and separating into thin flakes. Wood heavy, hard, not strong, close-grained, difficult to split, light brown, with thick slightly lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. River valleys in fertile soil, or as a shrub on dry barren ridges; valleys of the upper Marcos and of the Guadalupe Rivers, Texas, to the Rio Grande; often extremely common on the bottom-lands, and probably of its largest size in the United States on the Guadalupe and Nueces Rivers sixty or seventy miles from the coast; through Nuevo Leon and Coahuila to the mountains of San Luis Potosí.

Often planted as a shade-tree in the streets of the cities and towns of western Texas and northeastern Mexico.

LXII. Verbenaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with opposite simple entire persistent leaves, without stipules. Flowers perfect; calyx 5-toothed or parted, persistent under the fruit; corolla 4 or 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens 4, inserted on the tube of the corolla in pairs of different lengths, anthers 2-celled, introrse, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary sessile on the annular disk; style simple, 2-lobed and stigmatic at apex. Fruit a fleshy drupe or a capsule.

The Verbena family with seventy-eight genera, largely composed of herbaceous plants, is widely scattered through temperate and tropical regions. Some of the species are important timber-trees, the most valuable being the Teak, Tectoria grandis L. f., of southeastern Asia and the Malay Archipelago, and some of the tropical species of Vitex.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Genera of the United States.

Flowers in axillary or terminal racemes; staminodium 1; ovary imperfectly 4-celled; fruit a fleshy drupe.

1. Citharexylon.

Flowers cymose in pedunculate spikes or heads; staminodium 0; ovary 1-celled; fruit a capsule.

2. Avicennia.

1. Citharexylon L.

Trees or shrubs, with coriaceous lustrous leaves, slightly angled branchlets, without a terminal bud, and with minute axillary buds. Flowers small, on short ebracteolate pedicels, alternate or scattered on the filiform rachis of a slender raceme; calyx membranaceous, tubular-campanulate, truncate, minutely 5-toothed, spreading and cup-shaped under the fruit; corolla salver-form, usually white, the spreading limb somewhat oblique, 5-lobed, the lobes broad-ovate, rounded, slightly unequal, the 2 posterior exterior, sometimes reduced to staminodia; stamens included; filaments short, filiform, slightly thickened at base, the 2 anterior filaments longer than the others; anthers oblong; staminodium 1, posterior, linear, acute, rarely fertile; ovary ovoid, incompletely 4-celled by the development of two parietal placentas, gradually narrowed into a short included style; ovule solitary in each cell, erect, attached laterally near the base, ascending, anatropous; micropyle inferior. Fruit a 2-stoned 4-seeded fleshy drupe tipped with the remnants of the style, with thin flesh and a thick-walled bony stone separable into 2 2-seeded compressed smooth light brown nutlets rounded on the back and concave on the inner face. Seed erect, without albumen, filling the seminal cavity; seed-coat membranaceous, light brown; embryo subterete, straight; cotyledons thick and fleshy, oblong, much longer than the short inferior radicle turned toward the oblong basal hilum.

Citharexylon with about twenty species is confined to tropical America, where it is distributed from southern Florida through the West Indies to southern Mexico, Lower California, Bolivia, and Brazil.

The generic name, from κιθάρα and ξύλον, is a translation of the English West Indian name Fiddle Wood, a corruption of the earlier French-colonial Bois Fidèle, in allusion to the strength and toughness of the wood of the trees of this genus.

1. Citharexylon fruticosum L. Fiddle Wood.

Citharexylon villosum Jacq.

Leaves oblong-obovate to oblong, acute, acuminate, rounded or emarginate at apex, and gradually narrowed at base, with thickened slightly revolute margins, and glabrous or coated with short pubescence (var. villosum Schulz); conspicuously reticulate-venulose, pale green, 3′—4′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, with a broad pale midrib rounded on the upper side and remote prominent arcuate veins; petioles stout, grooved, ⅔′ in length, separating in falling from an elevated nearly circular persistent woody base. Flowers fragrant, appearing throughout the year on slender pedicels from the axils of scarious pubescent bracts, in drooping axillary pubescent racemes crowded near the end of the branches and 2′—4′ long; calyx coated with pale hairs, or sometimes nearly glabrous; corolla ⅛′ across the expanded lobes of the limb, and covered on the inner surface of the tube with pale hairs; staminodium minute. Fruit subglobose to oblong-ovoid, light red-brown, very lustrous, ⅓′ in diameter, with thin sweet rather juicy flesh, and inclosed nearly to the middle in the cup-like pale brown slightly and irregularly lobed or sometimes nearly entire calyx; seeds oblong, narrowed at the rounded ends, about ⅛′ long.

A tree, in Florida rarely more than 30° high, with a trunk 4′—7′ in diameter, slender upright branches forming a narrow irregularly shaped head, and slender slightly many-angled branchlets light yellow and covered with pale simple caducous hairs or pubescent when they first appear, becoming in their second year terete and ashy gray; or often a shrub, with numerous low stems. Winter-buds globose, nearly immersed in the bark, and covered with hoary pubescence. Bark of the trunk /16′—⅛′ thick, light brown tinged with red, the surface separating into minute appressed scales. Wood heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, clear bright red, with thin lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, Cape Canaveral to the southern keys; common and of its largest size in the United States on the shores of Bay Biscayne near the mouth of the Miami River, Dade County; northward usually a low shrub; on the Bahama Islands and on many of the Antilles.

2. Avicennia L.

Trees, with coriaceous persistent leaves, stout pithy branches thickened at the nodes and marked by interpetiolar lines, and long thick horizontal roots producing numerous short vertical thick and fleshy leafless stems rising above the surface of the soil. Flowers opposite, cymose, in centripetal pedunculate spikes or heads, closely invested by a bract and 2 bractlets, the peduncles solitary or in pairs in the axils of upper leaves and ternate on the end of the branches, their bracts and bractlets concave, acute, apiculate, keeled on the back, scarious, slightly ciliate on the margins, shorter than the corolla, persistent under the fruit; calyx cup-shaped, coated like the bracts and bractlets with canescent pubescence, divided nearly to the base into 5 concave ovate rounded lobes imbricated in the bud; corolla campanulate, white, with a straight cylindric tube shorter than the glabrous or tomentose spreading 4-lobed limb, the posterior lobe usually larger than the others; stamens exserted; filaments short, filiform, slightly thickened at base; anthers ovoid; ovary ovoid, pubescent, 1-celled, gradually narrowed into an elongated slender style divided at apex into 2 lobes stigmatic on their inner face; ovules 4, suspended from the summit of a free central placenta, orthotropous, naked. Fruit an ovoid oblique compressed 1-seeded capsule apiculate at apex; pericarp thin, light green, villose-pubescent on the outer surface, longitudinally veined on the inner surface, opening by the ventral suture and displaying the embryo enlarging before separating from the branch, ultimately 2-valved. Seed naked, without albumen; embryo filling the cavity of the fruit, light green; cotyledons thick and fleshy, broader than long, slightly pointed, deeply cordate at base, unequal, conduplicate; radicle elongated, clavate, retrorsely hirsute, inferior, descending obliquely and included between the lobes of the cotyledons slightly attached near the apex in the bottom of the capsule to the withered columella by a minute papillose point; plumule hairy.

Avicennia with three species is widely distributed on maritime shores of the tropics of the two worlds, with one species reaching those of the southern United States. Avicennia produces hard strong wood. The bark is rich in tannic acid, and is used for tanning leather. The chief value of these trees is in their ability to live on low tidal shores by the structure of the embryo, which is growing and ready to take root as soon as it falls into the soft mud, and in the long horizontal roots furnished with short vertical fleshy leafless branches or aerating roots, forming a close network which holds the soil together and prevents it from being washed away by outflowing tides, and extends the growth of the tree by numerous stems which soon form dense thickets.

The generic name is in honor of the illustrious physician of the Orient, Avicenna of Bokhara (980—1036).

1. Avicennia nitida Jacq. Black Mangrove.

Leaves oblong or lanceolate-elliptic, rounded or acute at apex and gradually narrowed at base, dark green and often lustrous above, hoary-tomentulose below, 2′—3′ long and ¾′—1½′ wide, with slightly thickened revolute margins, a broad midrib thickened and grooved toward the base on the upper side, and oblique primary veins arcuate and joined close to the margins, conspicuous on the 2 surfaces, and connected by prominent reticulate veinlets; appearing irregularly and falling early in their second season; petioles broad, channeled, enlarged at base, and about ½′ in length. Flowers produced continuously throughout the year, their bracts and bractlets nearly ¼′ long, coated with pale or slightly rufous pubescence and about as long as the lobes of the calyx, in few-flowered short spikes on stout 4-angled canescent peduncles ½′—1½′ in length, the lateral peduncles of the ternate terminal cluster subtended by oblong acute bracts ½′ long; corolla ½′ across the expanded slightly tomentose lobes, and nearly closed in the throat. Fruit 1′—1½′ long and ¾′—1′ wide.

A tree, occasionally 60°—70° high, with a short trunk rarely 2° in diameter, spreading branches forming a broad round-topped head, and branchlets at first slightly angled, coated with fine hoary deciduous pubescence, and light orange color, becoming in their second year more or less contorted, light or dark gray, conspicuously marked by the interpetiolar lines and by horizontal leaf-scars displaying a central row of fibro-vascular bundle-scars; usually not more than 20°—30° tall, with a short slender stem, and toward the northern limit of its range a low shrub. Bark of the trunk ¼′—½′ thick, roughened with thin irregularly appressed dark brown scales tinged with red, and in falling displaying the bright orange-red inner bark. Wood very heavy, hard, rather coarse-grained, with numerous medullary rays and eccentric layers of annual growth, dark brown or nearly black, with thick brown sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, St. Augustine to the southern keys on the east coast, and from Cedar Keys to Cape Sable on the west coast; on some of the islands in Mississippi Sound, and on the shore of Terrebonne and Cameron Parishes, and on most of their islands, Louisiana; on the Bahama Islands, on many of the Antilles, and southward to Brazil; and on the west coast of Africa; in the United States of its largest size in Florida just north of Cape Sable; north of Matanzas Inlet on the east coast of Florida usually with stems only a few feet tall.

LXIII. Solanaceæ.

Trees, shrubs or herbs, with colorless juice and rank smelling foliage, alternate rarely opposite leaves, without stipules, and perfect regular yellow, white or purple flowers on ebracteolate pedicels in usually dichotomous cymes; calyx campanulate, usually 5-lobed, the lobes slightly imbricated or valvate, usually persistent; corolla gamopetalous, usually 5, rarely 4-lobed, the lobes induplicate-valvate or plicate in the bud; stamens inserted on the tube of the corolla and alternate with and as many as its lobes, equal or unequal; filaments filiform or dilated at base; anthers 2-celled, introrse, opening by apical or longitudinal slits, disk pulvinate or annular, entire, sinuate or 2-lobed or 0; ovary sessile or stipitate on the disk, 2 or rarely 3—5-celled; style slender, terminating in a small or more or less dilated stigma; ovules numerous, attached in many series on the axile placenta, rarely few or solitary, anatropous or slightly amphitropous. Fruit baccate or capsular. Seeds numerous; testa membranaceous or crustaceous; embryo usually slender and curved in fleshy albumen; cotyledons semiterete, shorter than the radicle turned toward the hilum.

A family of 83 genera widely distributed in tropical and temperate regions; often producing fruit with narcotic or poisonous properties, and containing among its useful members the Potato and the Tomato.

1. Solanum L.

Herbs, shrubs or rarely trees. Leaves alternate, lobed or pinnatifid, persistent or deciduous. Flowers in mostly lateral, extra-axillary or axillary clusters; calyx and corolla 5, rarely 4—10-parted, the calyx persistent under the fruit, corolla rotate in the bud; stamens 5, rarely 4—6, exserted; filaments short; anthers oblong or acuminate, rarely ovoid, converging round the style, opening at apex by two pores; disk not conspicuous, or annular; ovary usually 2, rarely 3 or 4-celled; style simple; stigma usually small; ovules numerous. Fruit baccate, often surrounded by the enlarged calyx, usually globose and juicy; seeds compressed, orbicular or subreniform.

Solanum with some 1200 species is widely distributed through the tropics, with a few species extending into cooler regions, the larger number of species occurring in the New World.

The name is of uncertain derivation.

1. Solanum verbascifolium L.

Leaves ovate to elliptic or oblong, acute or acuminate at apex, rounded or cuneate at base, entire, thickly coated when they unfold with hoary tomentum, and at maturity thin, yellow-green and stellate-pubescent on the upper surface, paler and more densely stellate-pubescent on the lower surface, 5′—7′ long and 1′—3′ wide, with slightly undulate margins, a prominent midrib and slender primary veins; persistent; petioles slender, densely stellate-pubescent, ¾′—1′ in length. Flowers appearing throughout the year on pedicels ¼′ long and much thickened at maturity, in broad many-flowered dichotomous stellate-pubescent cymes on peduncles 1′—4′ in length from the axils of upper leaves; calyx about ½′ long, densely stellate, the lobes triangular-ovate; corolla about ¾′—1′ wide after the expansion of the oblong-ovate lobes; stamens exserted. Fruit globose, yellow, ½′—¾′ in diameter, surrounded at base by the densely stellate calyx, with ovate acute lobes about ⅙′ long; seeds nearly orbicular to obovoid, much compressed, yellow, /12′ in diameter.

A tree, rarely 20° high, with a trunk 4′ or 5′ in diameter, spreading branches forming a flat-topped head, and stout unarmed branchlets densely stellate-tomentose during their first season, becoming glabrous and light orange-brown or gray-brown in the following year; usually smaller and generally a shrub. Bark of the trunk thin, close, much roughened by many wart-like excrescences, light greenish or yellowish gray.

Florida, rich hummocks, Merritt’s Island on the east coast, southward to the shores of Bay Biscayne, and to the Cape Sable region; on the Bahama Islands, and many of the Antilles, in Mexico and Central America, in the tropics of the Old World and in southeastern China; now thoroughly established but more probably introduced than indigenous in Florida.

LXIV. Bignoniaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and opposite or rarely alternate simple (in the arborescent genera of the United States) leaves, without stipules. Flowers perfect, large and showy; calyx closed in the bud, bilabiately splitting in anthesis; corolla hypogynous, 2-lipped, 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens 2 or 4, inserted on the corolla, introrse; anthers 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; staminodia 1 or 3; ovary sessile, 1 or 2-celled, gradually narrowed into a slender simple style 2-lobed and stigmatic at apex; ovules numerous, horizontal, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit a linear woody loculicidally 2-valved capsule, or a berry. Seeds without albumen; embryo filling the cavity of the seed.

The Bignonia family with about one hundred genera, many of them of scandent plants, is widely distributed in the tropics and most abundant in the New World, with a few genera extending into temperate regions. Of the five genera of the United States three are arborescent. Many of the species are important timber-trees.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Genera of the United States.

Fruit a linear woody capsule; ovary 2-celled; leaves thin, deciduous.

Stamens 4; staminodium 1; leaves linear, often alternate or scattered.

1. Chilopsis.

Stamens 2; staminodia 3; leaves oblong-ovate, mostly opposite.

2. Catalpa.

Fruit a berry; stamens 4; staminodium 1; ovary 1-celled; leaves coriaceous, persistent.

3. Enallagma.

1. Chilopsis D. Don.

A tree, with slender terete branches, without a terminal bud, minute compressed rusty-pubescent axillary buds covered by several imbricated scales, those of the inner rows accrescent, deeply furrowed bark, soft coarse-grained dark-colored wood, and fibrous roots. Leaves opposite, alternate or scattered, involute in the bud, linear or linear-lanceolate, long-pointed, entire, 3-nerved, the lateral nerves obscure, reticulate-venulose, thin, light green, smooth or glutinous, short-petiolate or sessile from an enlarged base, deciduous, in falling leaving small elevated suborbicular scars. Flowers on slender pedicels from the axils of ovate acute scarious tomentose deciduous bracts and bibracteolate near the middle, in short puberulous crowded racemes or rarely panicles terminal on leafy branches of the year; calyx pale pubescent, puberulous or rarely glabrous, closed before anthesis into an ovoid rounded apiculate bud splitting to the base into 2 ovate divisions, minutely toothed or long-pointed at apex, the upper with 3, the lower with 2 rigid teeth, membranaceous, dark green; corolla white shaded into pale purple or rarely white, slightly oblique, enlarged and blotched with yellow in the throat, the limb undulate-margined, the upper lip 2-lobed, the lower unequally 3-lobed, the central lobe much longer than the others; stamens 4, inserted in 1 row near the base of the corolla in pairs, introrse; filaments filiform, glabrous, the anterior nearly twice as long as the posterior; anther oblong, the cells divergent in anthesis; staminodium 1, posterior, linear, acute; disk thin, nearly obsolete; ovary 2-celled, conic, glabrous, divided at apex into 2 ovate flat rounded lobes; ovules inserted in many series on a central placenta. Fruit a slender elongated thin-walled capsule gradually narrowed from the middle to the ends, splitting into 2 concave valves. Seeds numerous, inserted in 2 ranks near the margin of the thin flat woody septum free from the walls of the capsule, compressed, oblong; seed-coat thin, light brown, longitudinally veined, produced into broad lateral wings divided at their rounded ends into a long fringe of thin soft white hairs; cotyledons plane, broader than long, slightly 2-lobed, and rounded laterally; radicle short, erect, turned toward the oblong basal hilum.

The genus is represented by a single species, a native of the region adjacent to the boundary between the United States and Mexico.

The generic name, from χεῖλος and ὄψις, is without special significance.

1. Chilopsis linearis DC. Desert Willow.

Leaves unfolding in early spring, 6′—12′ long and ¼′—⅓′ wide; deciduous during the following winter. Flowers appearing in early summer in racemes or narrow panicles 3′—4′ long, and continuing to open for several months in succession, ¾′—1½′ long and ¾′—1¼′ across the expanded lobes of the corolla. Fruit ripening in the autumn, 7′—12′ long, ¼′ thick in the middle, persistent on the branches during the winter; seeds ⅓′ long and ⅛′ wide.

A tree, 20°—30° high, with a trunk usually more or less reclining, often hollow, and sometimes a foot in diameter, slender upright branches forming a narrow head, and branchlets glabrous or covered with dense tomentum when they first appear, light chestnut-brown during their first season, later becoming darker and tinged with red, or sometimes ashy gray; or often a straggling shrub. Bark of the trunk ⅛′—¼′ thick, dark brown, and divided into broad branching ridges broken on the surface into small thick plate-like scales. Wood soft, not strong, close-grained, brown streaked with yellow, with thin light-colored sapwood of 2 or 3 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Banks of streams, and depressions in the desert, usually in dry gravelly porous soil; valley of the lower Rio Grande, and through western Texas, southern New Mexico, Arizona, southern Utah and Nevada to San Jacinto Valley, San Diego County, California; in northern Mexico and Lower California (Calamujuit).

Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental plant in the southern states, and in Mexico.

2. Catalpa Scop.

Trees, with stout terete branchlets, without a terminal bud, minute globose axillary buds nearly immersed in the bark and covered by numerous scales, the inner accrescent, thick pith, thin scaly bark, soft light-colored wood very durable in contact with the soil, and fibrous roots. Leaves opposite or in verticels of 3, involute in the bud, entire or lobed, oblong-ovate, often cordate, long-petiolate, deciduous. Flowers on slender bracteolate pedicels, in terminal compound trichotomously branched panicles or corymbs, with linear-lanceolate deciduous bracts and bractlets; calyx membranaceous, subglobose, closed and apiculate in the bud, in anthesis splitting nearly to the base into 2 broad-ovate entire pointed apiculate lobes; corolla thin, variously marked and spotted on the inner surface, inserted on the nearly obsolete disk, the tube broad, campanulate, occasionally furnished on the upper side near the base with an external lobed appendage, and oblique and enlarged above into a broad limb, with spreading lips undulate on the margin, the posterior 2-parted, the anterior deeply 3-lobed; stamens and staminodia inserted near the base of the corolla; stamens 2, anterior, included or slightly exserted; filaments flattened, arcuate; anthers oblong, carried to the rear of the corolla and face to face on either side of the stigma by a half turn of the filaments near their base, the cells divergent in anthesis; staminodia 3, free, filiform, minute or rudimentary; ovary 2-celled, sessile on the hypogynous nearly obsolete disk, abruptly contracted into an elongated filiform style divided at apex into 2 stigmatic lobes exserted above the anthers; ovules inserted in many series on a central placenta. Fruit an elongated subterete capsule tapering from the middle to the ends, persistent on the branches during the winter, ultimately splitting into 2 valves. Seeds numerous, compressed, oblong, inserted in 2—4 ranks near the margin of the flat or more or less thickened woody septum free from the walls of the capsule; seed-coat thin, light brown or silvery gray, longitudinally veined, produced into broad lateral wings notched at base of the seed and divided at their narrowed or rounded ends into tufts of long coarse white hairs; cotyledons plane, broader than long, slightly 2-lobed, rounded laterally; radicle short, erect, turned toward the oblong conspicuous basal hilum.

Catalpa with seven species is confined to the eastern United States, the West Indies, and eastern China, two of the species being North American. Catalpa contains a bitter principle and is a tonic and diuretic.

The generic name is that by which one of the North American species was known among the Cherokee Indians.

Conspectus of the North American Species.

Flowers in many-flowered crowded panicles; calyx glabrous; corolla thickly-spotted on the inner surface; fruit slender, thin-walled; leaves short-acuminate.

1. C. bignonioides (C).

Flowers in few-flowered open panicles; calyx often sparingly villose or pubescent; corolla inconspicuously spotted; fruit stout, thick-walled; leaves caudate-acuminate.

2. C. speciosa (A, C).

1. Catalpa bignonioides Walt. Catalpa. Indian Bean.

Catalpa Catalpa Karst.

Leaves broad-ovate, rather abruptly contracted into a slender point or sometimes rounded at apex, cordate at base, entire or often laterally lobed, coated below when they unfold with pale tomentum and pilose above, and at maturity thin and firm, light green and glabrous on the upper surface, pale and pubescent on the lower surface, 5′—6′ long and 4′—5′ wide, with a prominent midrib, and primary veins arcuate near the margins, connected by reticulate veinlets and furnished in the axils with clusters of dark hairs; turning black and falling after the first severe frost in the autumn; petioles stout, terete, 5′—6′ in length. Flowers opening at the end of May or in June, on slender sparingly villose or glabrous pedicels, in compact many-flowered panicles 8′—10′ long and broad, with light green branches tinged with purple; calyx ½′ long, glabrous, green or light purple; corolla white, nearly 2′ long, 1½′ wide, marked on the inner surface on the lower side by 2 rows of yellow blotches following 2 parallel ridges or folds, and in the throat and on the lower lobes of the limb by crowded conspicuous purple spots. Fruit ripening in the autumn, in thick-branched orange-colored panicles, remaining unopened during the winter, 6′—20′ long and ¼′—⅓′ thick in the middle, with a thin wall bright chestnut-brown on the outer surface and light olive-brown and lustrous on the inner surface, splitting in the spring into 2 flat valves; seeds about 1′ long, ¼′ wide, silvery gray, with pointed wings terminating in long pencil-shaped tufts of white hairs.

A tree, rarely 60° high, with a short trunk 3°—4° in diameter, long heavy brittle branches forming a broad head, and dichotomous branchlets green shaded with purple when they first appear, and during their first winter thickened at the nodes, slightly puberulous, lustrous, light orange color or gray-brown, covered with a slight glaucous bloom, marked by large pale scattered lenticels, and by large oval elevated leaf-scars containing a circle of conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars, becoming in their third or fourth year, reddish brown and marked by a network of thin flat brown ridges. Winter-buds covered by chestnut-brown broad-ovate rounded slightly puberulous loosely imbricated scales, those of the inner ranks when fully grown bright green, pubescent, and sometimes 2′ in length. Bark of the trunk ¼′—⅓′ thick, light brown tinged with red, and separating on the surface into large thin irregular scales. Wood not strong, coarse-grained, light brown, with lighter colored often nearly white sapwood of 1 or 2 layers of annual growth; used and highly valued for fence-posts and rails.

Distribution. Usually supposed to be indigenous on the banks of the rivers of southwestern Georgia, western Florida, and central Alabama and Mississippi, and now widely naturalized through the south Atlantic states and in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Often planted for the decoration of parks and gardens in the eastern United States, and hardy as far north as eastern New England, and in western, central, and southern Europe. A dwarf round-headed form (var. nana Bur.) of unknown origin is often cultivated under the erroneous name of C. Bungei Hort, not C. A. Meyer.

× Catalpa hybrida Spaeth a hybrid of this species and the Chinese C. ovata G. Don is occasionally cultivated.

2. Catalpa speciosa Engelm. Western Catalpa.

Leaves oval, long-pointed, cordate at base, and usually entire or furnished with 1 or 2 lateral teeth, pilose above when they unfold and covered below and on the petioles with pale or rufous tomentum, and at maturity thick and firm, dark green on the upper surface and covered with soft pubescence on the lower surface, especially on the stout midrib and the primary veins furnished in their axils with large clusters of dark glands, 10′—12′ long and 7′—8′ wide; turning black and falling after the first severe frost of the autumn; petioles stout, terete, 4′—6′ in length. Flowers appearing late in May or early in June, on slender purple glabrous pedicels furnished near the middle with 1—3 bractlets, in open few-flowered panicles 5′—6′ long and broad, with green or purple branches marked by orange-colored lenticels, the lowest branches often in the axils of small leaves; calyx purple, often sparingly villose or pubescent on the outer surface; corolla white, often spotted externally with purple near the base, about 2′ long and 2½′ wide, and marked internally on the lower side by 2 bands of yellow blotches following 2 lateral ridges and by occasional purple spots spreading over the lobes of the lower lip of the limb; filaments marked near the base by oblong purple spots. Fruit 8′—20′ long, ½′—¾′ in diameter near the middle, with a thick wall splitting toward spring into 2 concave valves; seeds 1′ long and ⅓′ wide, with a light brown coat, and wings rounded at the ends and terminating in a fringe of short hairs.

A tree, in the forest occasionally 120° high, with a tall straight trunk rarely 4½° in diameter, slender branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and branchlets light green often tinged with purple and pilose with scattered pale hairs when they first appear, light orange color or reddish brown, covered with a slight bloom during their first winter, and marked by numerous conspicuous pale lenticels and by the elevated oval leaf-scars ¼′ long and displaying a circular row of large fibro-vascular bundle-scars, becoming darker in their second and third years; usually smaller, and in open situations rarely more than 50° high, with a short trunk and a broad head of spreading branches. Winter-buds covered by loosely imbricated ovate chestnut-brown scales keeled on the back, slightly apiculate at apex, those of the inner ranks at maturity foliaceous, obovate, acute, gradually narrowed below to a sessile base, many-nerved with dark veins, pubescent on the lower surface, and sometimes 2½′ long and ¾′ wide. Bark of the trunk ¾′—1′ thick, brown tinged with red, and broken on the surface into thick scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, coarse-grained, light brown, with thin nearly white sapwood of 1 or 2 layers of annual growth; largely used for fence-posts, rails, telegraph and telephone poles, and occasionally for furniture and the interior finish of houses.

Distribution. Borders of streams and ponds, and fertile often inundated bottom-lands; valley of the Vermilion River, Illinois, through southern Illinois and Indiana, western Kentucky and Tennessee, southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas; very abundant and probably of its largest size in southern Illinois and Indiana; naturalized through cultivation in southern Arkansas, western Louisiana, and eastern Texas.

Often planted in the prairie region of the Mississippi basin as a timber-tree, and as an ornament of parks and gardens in the eastern states, and now in many other countries with a temperate climate.

3. Enallagma Bail.

Trees, with scaly bark, and stout slightly angled branchlets. Leaves alternate, short-petiolate, persistent. Flowers solitary, or in few-flowered fascicles on long bibracteolate peduncles from the axils of upper leaves or from the sides of the branches; calyx coriaceous, splitting in anthesis into 2 unequal broad divisions, or sometimes slightly 5-lobed, deciduous; corolla inserted under the hypogynous pulvinate fleshy disk, yellow streaked with purple, or dingy purple, tubular-campanulate, more or less ventricose on the lower side by a transverse fold, abruptly dilated into an oblique 2-lipped obscurely 5-lobed laciniately toothed limb; stamens 4, inserted in 2 ranks on the tube of the corolla, in pairs of different lengths, introrse, included or slightly exserted; filaments filiform; anthers oblong, the cells divergent; staminodium solitary, posterior, often 0; ovary sessile, 1-celled, ovate-conic, gradually narrowed into an elongated simple exserted style; stigma terminal, 2-lobed, the lobes stigmatic on their inner face, or entire; ovules in many ranks on 2 thickened 2-lobed lateral parietal placentas. Fruit baccate, oblong or ovoid; indehiscent, umbonate at apex, many-seeded; pericarp thin and brittle; becoming hard, light brown and separable into 2 layers, the inner membranaceous, filled with the united and thickened fleshy viscid placentas attached at base by a cluster of thick fibro-vascular bundles. Seeds imbedded irregularly in the placental mass, compressed, suborbicular, cordate above and below and deeply grooved on the convex faces; embryo filling the seminal cavity, flattened, thick and fleshy, deeply grooved, becoming black in drying; radicle minute, turned toward the lateral hilum.

Enallagma with three or four species is distributed from southern Florida through the Antilles to southern Mexico and Central America.

1. Enallagma cucurbitina Urb. Black Calabash Tree.

Crescentia cucurbitina L.

Leaves crowded near the end of the branches, obovate-oblong or ovate-oblong, contracted into a short broad point or rarely rounded or emarginate at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, and entire, with cartilaginous slightly revolute margins, coriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, paler and yellow-green below, 6′—8′ long and 1½′—4′ wide, with a broad stout midrib deeply impressed on the upper side, conspicuous primary veins arcuate and united near the margins, and reticulate veinlets; unfolding in the spring, and persistent until their second year; petioles thick, covered with glands, and about ¼′ in length. Flowers appearing in April and May and also in autumn, bad-smelling, on thick drooping pedicels solitary in the axils of upper leaves, 1½′—2′ long, furnished below the middle with 2 minute rigid acute bractlets and enlarged at apex into the thick oblique receptacle; calyx light green and slightly glandular at base, splitting nearly to the bottom into 2 ovate pointed lobes nearly as long as the tube of the corolla; corolla thick and leathery, dull purple or creamy white, and marked by narrow purple bands on the lower side, and 2′ long, with a narrow tube creamy white within and slightly contracted above the base, the transverse fold near its apex, the limb erosely cut on the margins and obscurely 2-lipped, the upper lip slightly divided into 2 reflexed lobes, the lower obscurely 3-lobed; stamens inserted near the middle of the tube of the corolla, those of the anterior pair below the others and above the linear staminodium; ovary obliquely conic; stigma 2-lobed. Fruit ovoid or oblong, 3′—4′ long, 1½′—2′ wide, dark green, minutely rugose-punctulate, and marked with 4 obscure longitudinal ridges corresponding with the margins and midrib of the carpellary leaves, raised on the thickened woody disk and pendent on a stout drooping stalk 1½′—2′ long and much enlarged at apex; shell /16′ thick, ultimately hard and brittle, lustrous on the outer surface and lined with a thin membranaceous shining light brown coat marked by the broad placental scars; seeds ⅝′ long and broad and ¼′ thick, with a minute lateral hilum just above the basal sinus; seed-coat of 2 layers, the outer thin, dark reddish brown, rugose, and separable from the thick pale felt-like inner layer; cotyledons with 2 ear-like folds near the base, inclosing the radicle in their lower sinus.

A tree, in Florida 18°—20° high, with a trunk 4′—5′ in diameter, long slender drooping branches covered with wart-like excrescences, and stout slightly angled branchlets roughened and somewhat enlarged at the nodes by the thickening of the large crowded cup-shaped persistent woody bases of the leaves, and covered with thin creamy white bark becoming dark or ashy gray in their third year. Winter-buds with linear acute apiculate scales becoming woody, and persistent for one or two years. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, light brown tinged with red, and irregularly divided into large thin scales. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, thin, light brown or orange color, with lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, only near the shores of Bay Biscayne on rich hummocks; common on the shores of many of the Antilles, and southward to southern Mexico, the Pacific coast of the Isthmus of Panama, and to Venezuela.

B. Ovary inferior (partly superior in Caprifoliaceæ).

LXV. Rubiaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and opposite simple entire leaves turning black in drying, with stipules. Flowers regular, perfect; calyx-tube adnate to the ovary, its limb 4 or 5-lobed or toothed; corolla 4 or 5-lobed; stamens inserted on the tube of the corolla, as many as and alternate with its lobes; filaments free, or united at base; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; disk epigynous, annular; ovary inferior; style slender; ovules numerous, or 1 in each cell; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit capsular, akene-like, or drupaceous. Seeds with albumen; seed-coat membranaceous.

The Madder family with some three hundred and fifty genera is chiefly tropical, with a few herbaceous genera confined exclusively to temperate regions. To this family belong the Coffee, the Cinchonas, South American trees yielding quinine from their bark, and the plant which produces ipecacuanha, a species of Cephaelis and a native of Brazil, the Gardenia and other plants cultivated for their fragrant flowers.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Genera of the United States.

Fruit a capsule; seeds numerous, surrounded by a wing; parts of the flower in 5’s.

Calyx 5-lobed, the lobes unequal, sometimes developing into rose-colored leaf-like bodies; filaments free; wing of the seed broad, oblong-ovate, unsymmetric on the sides; leaves deciduous.

1. Pinckneya.

Calyx 5-toothed; filaments united into a short tube; wing of the seed narrow, symmetric; leaves persistent.

2. Exostema.

Fruit akene-like, 1 or 2-seeded; parts of the flower in 4’s or rarely in 5’s, flowers in pedunculate globose heads; leaves deciduous.

3. Cephalanthus.

Fruit drupaceous, with a 4-celled stone; parts of the flower in 4’s; leaves persistent.

4. Guettarda.

1. Pinckneya Michx.

A tree, with fibrous roots, scaly light brown bitter bark, resinous scaly buds, stout terete pithy branchlets coated while young with hoary tomentum, becoming glabrous, and marked by scattered minute white lenticels and large nearly orbicular or obcordate leaf-scars displaying a lunate row of numerous crowded fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Leaves complanate in the bud, elliptic to oblong-ovate, acute at apex, cuneate at base, and gradually narrowed into a long stout petiole, thin, coated at first with pale pubescence, and at maturity dark green and puberulous above, paler and puberulous below, especially along the stout midrib and primary veins, deciduous; stipules interpetiolar, conspicuously glandular-punctate at base on the inner face, inclosing the leaf in the bud, triangular, subulate, pink, becoming oblong, acute, scarious, light brown, caducous. Flowers in pedunculate terminal and axillary pubescent trichotomous few-flowered cymes, with linear-lanceolate acute bracts and bractlets at first pink, becoming scarious, deciduous, or sometimes enlarging and rose-colored; flower-buds sulcate, coated with thick pale tomentum; calyx-tube clavate, bracteolate at base, covered with hoary tomentum, not closed in the bud, the limb 5-lobed, with subulate-lanceolate lobes green tinged with pink, scarious, or in the central flower of the ultimate division of the cyme with 1 or rarely with 2 of the lobes produced into oval or ovate acute rose-colored puberulous membranaceous leaf-like bodies, deciduous; corolla salver-form, light yellow, cinereo-tomentose, with a long narrow tube somewhat enlarged in the throat, 5-lobed, the lobes valvate in the bud, oblong, obtuse, marked by red lines and pilose with long white hairs on the inner surface, recurved after anthesis; stamens exserted; filaments filiform, free; anthers oblong, emarginate; ovary 2-celled; style filiform, exserted, slightly enlarged, 2-lobed and stigmatic at apex; ovules numerous, inserted in 2 ranks on a thin 2-lipped placenta longitudinally adnate to the inner face of the cell. Fruit a subglobose obscurely 2-lobed 2-celled capsule, loculicidally 2-valved, the valves thin and papery, light brown, puberulous, especially at the base, faintly rayed, marked by oblong pale spots and by the scars left by the falling of the deciduous calyx-limb and style, sometimes tardily septicidally 2-parted to the middle, persistent on the branches during the winter, the valves finally falling from the woody axis, their outer layer very thin, brittle, separable from the slightly thicker tough woody inner layer. Seeds horizontal, 2-ranked, minute, compressed; seed-coat thin, light brown, reticulate-veined, produced into a broad thin oblong-ovate wing, unsymmetrical on the sides, acute at apex, and longer above than below the seed; embryo elongated, immersed in the thick fleshy albumen; cotyledons ovate-oblong, foliaceous, longer than the terete radicle turned toward the hilum.

The genus is represented by a single species of the southeastern United States.

The generic name is in honor of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746—1825) of South Carolina, the Revolutionary patriot.

1. Pinckneya pubens Michx. Georgia Bark.

Leaves unfolding in March, 5′—8′ long, 3′—4′ wide; petioles ⅔′—1½′ in length. Flowers 1½′ long appearing late in May and early in June, in open clusters 7′—8′ across, their petaloid calyx-lobes sometimes 2½′ long and ½′ wide. Fruit ripening in the autumn 1′ long and ⅔′ wide; seeds with their wings about ½′ long and ⅓′ wide.

A tree, 20°—30° high, with a trunk occasionally 8′—10′ in diameter, slender spreading branches forming usually a narrow round-topped head, and branchlets coated when they first appear with hoary tomentum soon turning light red-brown, pubescent during the summer, and slightly puberulous during their first winter, ultimately becoming glabrous. Winter-buds: terminal ovoid, terete, ½′ long, contracted above the middle into a slender point, and covered by the dark red-brown lanceolate acute stipules of the last pair of leaves of the previous year, often persistent at the base of the growing shoots and marked at the base by 2 broadly ovate pale scar-like slightly pilose elevations; axillary buds obtuse, minute, nearly immersed in the bark. Bark of the trunk about ¼′ thick, with a light brown surface divided into minute appressed scales. Wood close-grained, soft, weak, brown, with lighter-colored sapwood of 8—10 layers of annual growth. The bark has been used in the treatment of intermittent fevers.

Distribution. Low wet sandy swamps on the borders of streams; coast region of South Carolina through southern Georgia and northern Florida to the valley of the lower Apalachicola River; rare and local.

2. Exostema Rich.

Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, and bitter bark. Leaves sessile or petiolate, persistent; stipules interpetiolar, deciduous. Flowers axillary and solitary or in terminal pedunculate cymes, fragrant, the peduncle bibracteolate above the middle; calyx-tube ovoid, clavate or turbinate, the limb short, 5-lobed, the lobes nearly triangular, persistent; corolla 5-lobed, white, salver-form, the tube long and narrow, erect, the lobes of the limb linear, elongated, spreading, imbricated in the bud; filaments filiform, exserted, united at base into a tube inserted on and adnate to the tube of the corolla; anthers oblong-linear; ovary 2-celled; style elongated, slender, exserted; stigma capitate, simple or minutely 2-lobed; ovules numerous, attached on the 2 sides of a fleshy oblong peltate placenta fixed to the inner face of the cell, ascending. Fruit a many-seeded 2-celled capsule septicidally 2-valved, the valves 2-parted, their outer layer membranaceous, separable from the crustaceous inner layer. Seeds compressed, oblong, imbricated downward on the placenta; seed-coat chestnut-brown, lustrous, produced into a narrow wing; embryo minute, in fleshy albumen; cotyledons flat; radicle terete, inferior.

Exostema with about twenty species is confined to the tropics of America, and is most abundant in the Antilles, one species reaching the shores of southern Florida. The bark contains active tonic properties, and has been used as a febrifuge.

The generic name, from ἔξω and στῆμα, relates to the long exserted stamens.

1. Exostema caribæum R. & S. Prince Wood.

Leaves oblong-ovate to lanceolate, contracted into a slender point and apiculate at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, entire, thick and coriaceous, dark green on the upper surface and yellow-green on the lower surface, 1½′—3′ long and ½′—1¼′ wide, with a prominent orange-colored midrib and conspicuous reticulate veinlets; unfolding in the autumn and in early spring and summer, and persistent for 1 or 2 years; petioles slender, orange-colored, ¼′—½′ in length; stipules nearly triangular, apiculate, with entire dentate or ciliate margins, about /16′ long, and in falling marking the branchlets with ring-like scars. Flowers axillary, solitary, appearing from March until June, about 3′ long, on slender pedicels spirally twisted before the flowers open; calyx-tube ovoid; corolla glabrous; filaments united into a short tube. Fruit ⅔′ long, becoming black in drying; seeds oblong, ⅛′ long, with a dark brown papillose coat and a light brown wing.

A glabrous tree, in Florida sometimes 20°—25° high, with a trunk 10′—12′ in diameter, slender erect branches forming a narrow head, and terete branchlets dark green at first, soon becoming dark red-brown and covered with pale lenticels, and in their second year ashy gray and conspicuously marked by the elevated leaf-scars. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, and divided by deep fissures into square smooth pale or nearly white plates. Wood very heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, light brown handsomely streaked with different shades of yellow and brown, with bright yellow sapwood of 12—20 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Florida, shores of Bay Biscayne and on the Everglade Keys, Dade County, and on the southern keys; abundant on Key West and Upper Metacombe Key; on many of the Antilles, in southern Mexico, and on the west coast of Nicaragua.

3. Cephalanthus L.

Small trees or shrubs, with opposite or verticillate petiolate leaves, interpetiolar stipules, and scaly buds. Flowers nectariferous, yellow or creamy white, sessile in the axils of glandular bracts, in dense globose pedunculate terminal or axillary solitary or panicled heads; receptacle globose, setose; calyx-tube obpyramidal, with a short limb unequally 4 or 5-toothed or lobed; corolla tubular salver-form, divided into 4 or 5 short spreading or reflexed lobes usually furnished with a minute dark gland at the base or on the side of each sinus, puberulous on the inner surface of the tube, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens inserted on the throat of the corolla; filaments short; anthers linear-oblong, sagittate, apiculate at base; pistil of 2 carpels; ovary 2-celled; style filiform, elongated; stigma clavate, entire; ovule solitary in each cell, suspended from the apex of the cell on a short papillose funicle, anatropous. Fruit obpyramidal, coriaceous, 2-coccous. Seeds oblong, pendulous, covered at apex by a white spongy aril; embryo straight in cartilaginous albumen; cotyledons oblong, obtuse; radicle elongated, superior.

Cephalanthus with seven species is widely distributed in North and South America, and in southern and eastern Asia, and the Malay Archipelago.

The generic name, from κεφαλή and ἄνθος, relates to the capitate inflorescence.

1. Cephalanthus occidentalis L. Button Bush.

Leaves ovate, lanceolate or elliptic, acute, acuminate or short-pointed at apex, rounded or cuneate at base, thin, dark green on the upper surface, paler and glabrous or puberulous on the lower surface, 2′—7′ long and ½′—3½′ wide, with a stout light yellow midrib often covered below with long white hairs and 5 or 6 pairs of slender primary veins nearly parallel with the sides of the leaf; deciduous, or persistent during the winter; petioles stout, grooved, glabrous, ½′—¾′ in length; stipules minute, nearly triangular. Flowers: flower-heads 1′—1½′ in diameter on slender peduncles 1′—2′ long, usually in panicles 4′—5′ in length, their lower peduncles from the axil of upper leaves; flowers creamy white, very fragrant, opening from the middle of May in Florida and Texas to the middle of August in Canada and on the mountains of California; calyx usually 4 or occasionally 5-lobed, with short rounded lobes, and slightly villose toward the base; corolla glandular or eglandular; anthers nearly sessile, included, discharging their pollen before the flowers open; disk thin and obscure. Fruit ripening late in the autumn in heads ⅝′—¾′ in diameter, green tinged with red and ultimately dark red-brown.

A tree, occasionally 40°—50° high, with a straight tapering trunk a foot in diameter, and frequently free of limbs for 15°—20°, ascending and spreading branches, and stout branchlets with a thick pith, glabrous and marked by large oblong pale lenticels, and developed mostly in verticels of 3’s from the axillary buds of one of the upper nodes, without a terminal bud, light green when they first appear, pale reddish brown, covered with a glaucous bloom during their first winter and then marked by small semicircular leaf-scars displaying semilunate fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and connected by the persistent black stipules or by their subulate scars, darker the following season, and dark brown in their third year, the bark then beginning to separate into the large loose scales found on the large branches and on the stems of small plants; usually a shrub, only a few feet high. Winter-buds axillary, single or in pairs or in 3’s one above the other, minute, nearly immersed in the bark. Bark of large trunks dark gray-brown or often nearly black, divided by deep fissures into broad flat ridges broken on the surface into elongated narrow scales. The bark contains tannin, and has been used in the treatment of fevers and in homœopathic practice.

Distribution. Swamps and the low wet borders of ponds and streams; New Brunswick to Ontario, southern Michigan, southern Minnesota, eastern Nebraska, Kansas and western Oklahoma (near Canton, Blaine County), southward to the shores of Bay Biscayne and the Everglade Keys, Dade County, Florida, eastern Texas to the valley of the Rio Grande, southern New Mexico, and Arizona, and widely distributed in California; in Mexico and Cuba; very rarely arborescent at the north and of its largest size on the margins of river-bottoms and swamps and in pond holes in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas; ascending on the southern Appalachian Mountains to altitudes of 2500°; passing into var. pubescens Rafn., with leaves soft pubescent below especially on the midrib and veins, and pubescent petioles, inflorescence and branchlets; southern Indiana, southeastern Missouri, southern Arkansas, western Louisiana and eastern Texas to the valley of the lower Brazos River.

Occasionally cultivated in the northeastern states as an ornamental plant.

4. Guettarda Endl.

Small trees or shrubs, with bitter bark, opposite or rarely verticellate persistent leaves, interpetiolar deciduous stipules, and scaly buds. Flowers sessile or short-pedicellate, with or without bractlets, in axillary forked pedunculate cymes, their bracts and bractlets lanceolate, acute, minute, deciduous; calyx globose, the limb produced above the ovary into an elongated 4—7-lobed tube; corolla salver-shaped, with an elongated cylindric tube naked in the throat, and a 4-lobed limb, the oblong lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens included; filaments free, short; anthers oblong-linear; ovary 4-celled, the cells elongated, tubular; style stout; stigma capitate; ovule solitary, suspended on the thickened funicle from the inner angle of the cell. Fruit a fleshy 1-stoned 2—9-seeded subglobose drupe, with thin flesh, and a bony or ligneous globose 4—9-celled stone obtusely angled or sulcate, the cells narrow and often curved upward. Seed compressed, suspended on the thick funicle closing the orifice of the wall of the stone, straight or excurved; albumen thin and fleshy; embryo elongated, cylindric or compressed; cotyledons flat, minute, not longer than the elongated terete radicle turned toward the hilum.

Guettarda with about fifty species is chiefly tropical American, with one species widely distributed on maritime shores from east tropical Africa to Australia and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Of the species found within the territory of the United States two are arborescent. The bark of some of the species is occasionally employed as a tonic and febrifuge, and a few species are cultivated in tropical gardens for the delightful fragrance of their white flowers.

The generic name is in honor of Jean Étienne Guettard (1715—1786), the distinguished French botanist and mineralogist.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Species of the United States.

Leaves thin, pilose or glabrate above.

1. G. elliptica (D).

Leaves coriaceous, hispidulose-papillose and scabrate above.

2. G. scabra (D).

1. Guettarda elliptica Sw.

Leaves broad-oval to oblong-elliptic, acute or obtuse and apiculate at apex, and cuneate or rounded at base, covered with pale silky hairs when they unfold, and at maturity thin, dark green, pilose or glabrate on the upper surface, lighter colored and pubescent on the lower surface, especially along the stout midrib and in the axils of the 4—6 pairs of primary veins, ¾′—2½′ long and ½′—1′ wide; unfolding in Florida in May and June and persistent on the branches until the trees begin their growth the following year; petioles stout, hairy, ¼′—½′ in length. Flowers pedicellate, appearing in Florida in June, yellowish white, ¼′ long, in slender hairy-stemmed cymes from the axils of leaves of the year near the end of branches, or from bud-scales at base of young shoots, their peduncle shorter than the leaves, forked near the apex, often with a flower in the fork and 3 at the end of each branch, or the lateral flowers of these clusters replaced by branches producing 3 flowers at their apex, the bractlets subtending the branches of the peduncle, and the lateral flowers of the ultimate divisions of the inflorescence linear-lanceolate, acute, coated with hairs, about /16′ long, deciduous; calyx-lobes nearly triangular, acute, coated on the outer surface with long pale hairs, and half as long as the erect corolla canescent externally, with rounded lobes. Fruit ripening in November, dark purple, pilose, ⅓′ in diameter, crowned with the remnants of the persistent calyx-tube, the flesh sweet and mealy; stone obscurely ridged and usually 2—4-seeded; seeds oblong-lanceolate, compressed, nearly straight, with a thin pale coat.

A tree, in Florida occasionally 18°—20° high, with an irregularly buttressed or lobed trunk 5′—6′ in diameter, the deep depressions between the lobes continuous or often interrupted, small upright branches, and thin terete branchlets coated when they first appear with long pale or rufous hairs and light red-brown or ashy gray and conspicuously marked by pale lenticels, and in their second year by large elevated orbicular leaf-scars. Winter-buds acuminate, light brown, coated with pale pubescence, and about ⅛′ long. Bark of the trunk about /16′ thick, with a smooth dark brown surface covered with large irregularly shaped pale blotches and numerous small white spots. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, light brown tinged with red, with thin sapwood of 6—10 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Florida, coast of the southern keys; on the Bahama Islands and in Jamaica.

2. Guettarda scabra Lam.

Leaves oval, oblong or ovate, acuminate or rounded and apiculate at apex, gradually narrowed or broad at the rounded or subcordate base, entire, coriaceous, dark green, hispidulose-papillose and scabrate on the upper surface, pale and soft-pubescent on the lower surface, 2′—5′ long and 1¼′—3¼′ wide, with thickened slightly revolute margins, a stout midrib, usually 8—11 pairs of prominent primary veins and conspicuous reticulate veinlets; petioles stout, rusty-pubescent, ⅓′—¾′ in length; stipules concave at base, gradually narrowed above into a long slender point, pubescent, as long as the petioles. Flowers produced irregularly during the winter and early spring, sessile or short-pedicellate in the axils of acute bracts, in pedunculate cymes on slender rusty-pubescent peduncles 1½′—2′ in length; calyx short-oblong, densely pubescent on the outer surface; corolla often 1′ in length, the slender tube retrorsely silky-villose on the outer surface, the lobes 5—7, usually 5, oblong-obtuse; filaments free, short; anthers oblong-linear, included, style shorter than the tube of the corolla; stigma capitate. Fruit ripening in the autumn, subglobose, pubescent, ¼′ in diameter, and crowned by the persistent tube of the calyx; flesh thin and dry; stone slightly angled thick-walled, 4—9-seeded.

A tree, in Florida sometimes 20°—25° high, with a tall trunk 2′—2½′ in diameter, small ascending branches forming an open irregular head, and stout or slender branchlets densely covered during their first season with rufous pubescence, and light reddish brown, slightly pubescent and marked by conspicuous leaf-scars in their second year; often a shrub.

Distribution. Florida, near Miami and on the Everglade Keys, Dade County, and on the southern keys; on the Bahama Islands and on several of the Antilles.

LXVI. Caprifoliaceæ.

Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, opposite petiolate leaves involute in the bud, with or without stipules, scaly buds, and fibrous roots. Flowers regular, perfect, with articulated pedicels, in terminal compound cymes; calyx-tube adnate to the ovary, 5-toothed; corolla epigynous, 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens 5, inserted on the tube of the corolla, as many as and alternate with its lobes; filaments slender, free; anthers oblong, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; disk 0 (in the arborescent genera of the United States); ovary inferior or partly superior, 3—5 or 1-celled; style short, capitate, 3—5-lobed and stigmatic at apex; ovule solitary, suspended from the apex of the cell, resupinate; raphe dorsal; micropyle superior. Fruit drupaceous, crowned with the remnants of the style. Seeds with copious fleshy albumen; seed-coat membranaceous, adherent to the albumen; embryo minute, near the hilum; cotyledons ovoid or ovate; radicle terete, erect.

The Honeysuckle family with ten genera is most abundant in the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, with a few species extending into the tropics and to beyond the tropics in the southern hemisphere. Many of the species, especially of Lonicera, Sambucus, and Viburnum, are cultivated in gardens for the beauty of their flowers and fruits.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Genera of the United States.

Leaves unequally pinnate; fruit with 3—5 nutlets.

1. Sambucus.

Leaves simple; fruit with 1 stone.

2. Viburnum.

1. Sambucus L. Elder.

Trees or shrubs, with stout branches containing thick white or brown pith, and buds with several scales. Leaves petiolate, unequally pinnate, deciduous, with serrate or laciniate leaflets, the base of the petiole naked, glandular or furnished with a stipule-like leaflet; stipels small, leaf-like, usually setaceous, often 0; stipules small, rudimentary, usually 0 except on vigorous shoots. Flowers small, in broad terminal corymbose cymes, their bracts and bractlets lanceolate, acute, scarious, caducous, sometimes ebracteolate; calyx-tube ovoid, the limb 3—5-lobed or toothed; corolla rotate or slightly campanulate, equally 3—5-parted; filaments filiform or subulate; ovary inferior or partly superior, 3—5-celled; style abbreviated, thick and conic, 3—5-lobed, stigmatic at apex. Fruit subglobose, with juicy flesh, and 3—5 oblong cartilaginous punctate-rugulose or smooth 1-seeded nutlets full and rounded on the back and rounded at the ends. Seeds filling the cavity of the nutlets, pale brown; cotyledons ovoid.

Sambucus with about twenty species is widely and generally distributed through the temperate parts of North America, Europe, and Asia, and inhabits high mountain ranges within the tropics, and in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Of the nine or ten North American species three are arborescent. Sambucus possesses cathartic and emetic properties in the bark; the flowers are excitant and sudorific, and the juice of the fruit is alterative and laxative. The dried flowers of the European Sambucus nigra L., are used in the preparation of an aromatic distilled water and in flavoring lard, and the hard and compact wood is made into combs and mathematical instruments. The large pithy shoots of Sambucus furnish children with pop-guns, pipes, and whistles; and the fruit of some of the species is cooked and eaten.

Sambucus, the name of the Elder-tree, is believed to have been derived from σαμβύκη, a musical instrument, probably in allusion to the use of the pithy stems.

Conspectus of the Arborescent Species of the United States.

Cymes flat-topped; pith usually white; fruit black; nutlets rugose.

Fruit lustrous.

1. S. Simpsonii (C).

Fruit appearing blue from a thick covering of bloom.

2. S. coerulea (B, F, G, H).

Cymes ovoid; pith pale brown; fruit red; nutlets smooth.

3. S. callicarpa (B, G).

1. Sambucus Simpsonii Rehd.

Leaves 4′—7′ long, 3—7, usually 5-foliolulate, with a glabrous petiole and usually 5 dark yellow-green leaflets, lustrous and glabrous on the upper surface with the exception of a few scattered hairs on the midrib, and paler and glabrous on the lower surface, the terminal leaflet obovate or oblong-obovate, short-acuminate at apex, and gradually narrowed at base into a slender petiolule ⅓′—½′ in length, the lateral leaflets broad-elliptic to oblong-elliptic, short-acuminate, broad-cuneate at base, those of the upper pair usually sessile, those of the lower pair on short stalks rarely more than /12′ long, serrate except at the base with small slightly spreading teeth, 1½′—3′ long and 1½′—2½′ wide. Flowers slightly fragrant, on slender pedicels in convex or sometimes flat cymes 3′—8′ in diameter, with 4 or 5 rays, the terminal ray as long or longer than the lateral rays, rarely shorter; calyx-tube ovoid, the lobes oblong-ovate, acute, about as long as the tube and slightly exceeding the thick conic style; stamens about as long as the white corolla-lobes; ovary usually 5, rarely 4-celled. Fruit subglobose, dark purplish black, about ¼′ in diameter; nutlets rugose.

A tree, sometimes 15°—18° high, with a trunk often 8′ in diameter, and slightly angled branchlets greenish when they first appear, becoming light yellow-gray and sometimes covered during their second and third years with thick corky excrescences; pith white, on 2 or 3-year-old branches comparatively narrow, occupying only about one-third of the diameter of the stem.

Distribution. Florida, neighborhood of Jacksonville, Duval County, to Eustis, Lake County, Bradentown, Manatee County, and Sanibel Island, Lee County; Mississippi, Ocean Springs, Jackson County; Louisiana, Cameron, Cameron Parish.

2. Sambucus coerulea Raf.

Sambucus glauca Nutt.
Sambucus neomexicana Woot.

Leaves 5′—7′ long, with a stout grooved petiole much enlarged and naked or sometimes furnished at the base with leaf-like appendages, and 5—9 ovate or narrow-oblong leaflets contracted at apex into a long point, unequally cuneate or rounded at base, and coarsely serrate with spreading or slightly incurved callous-tipped teeth, the lower leaflets often 3-parted or pinnate, the terminal one sometimes furnished with 1 or 2 lateral stalked leaflets, yellow-green on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, covered with scattered pale hairs when they unfold, and at maturity glabrous or soft pubescent beneath (var. velutina Rehd.), thin, rather firm in texture, bright green above and pale below, 1′—6′ long and ⅓′—1½′ wide, with a narrow pale midrib and inconspicuous veins; petiolules slender, those of the lateral leaflets ¼′—½′ and of the terminal leaflet up to 2′ in length; stipels linear, oblong-lanceolate to ovate, rounded or acute at apex, entire or sharply serrate and leaf-like, /16′—½′ long, caducous, often 0. Flowers ⅛′ in diameter, appearing from April in southern California to July in British Columbia, in flat long-branched glabrous or pubescent cymes 4′—10′ wide, with linear acute green caducous bracts and bractlets, the lower branches often from the axils of upper leaves; flower-buds globose, covered with a glaucous bloom, sometimes turning red before opening; calyx ovoid, red-brown, with acute scarious lobes; corolla yellowish white, with oblong divisions rounded at apex, as long as the stamens. Fruit subglobose, ⅓′ in diameter, black, appearing blue by its thick covering of mealy bloom; flesh rather sweet and juicy.

A tree, 30°—50° high, with a tall straight trunk sometimes enlarged at base and 12′—18′ in diameter, stout spreading branches forming a compact round-topped head, and branchlets usually without a terminal bud, green tinged with red or brown when they first appear, and covered with short white caducous hairs, or densely soft pubescent during their first season (var. velutina Rehd.), stout, slightly angled, covered with lustrous red-brown bark in their first winter and nearly encircled by the large triangular leaf-scars marked by conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars; pith white or rarely brownish; often a broad shrub, with numerous spreading stems. Winter-buds axillary generally in pairs, superposed or in clusters of 4 or 5, only the upper bud or sometimes the lower usually developing, covered with 2 or 3 pairs of opposite broad-ovate chestnut-brown scales, those of the inner rank accrescent, and at maturity acute, entire, green, 1′ long, and sometimes developing into pinnate leaves 2′—3′ in length. Bark of the trunk deeply and irregularly fissured, the dark brown surface slightly tinged with red and broken into small square appressed scales. Wood light, soft, weak, coarse-grained, yellow tinged with brown, with thin lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. Gravelly rather dry soil of valleys and river-bottoms; western Montana (neighborhood of Flathead Lake and Missoula, Missoula County), through Idaho to the coast of British Columbia (Vancouver Island), and southward to the San Bernardino Mountains and Santa Catalina Island, California, ascending on the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountains to altitudes of 6000°—8000°; Nevada, King’s Cañon, Ormsby County; Utah, Juab, Juab County, and the neighborhood of Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County; Colorado, near Trinidad, Las Animas County; New Mexico, Sacramento Mountains, Otero County; very abundant in the coast region; comparatively rare in the interior; of its largest size in the valleys of western Oregon; northward, and east of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountains rarely arborescent; in southern California often with smaller leaves and flower-clusters than northward; the var. velutina rare and local, California, Goose Valley, Shasta County; at altitudes of 6000°—7000° on the Sierra Nevada in Sierra, Madera and Kern Counties, and on Santa Catalina Island; Nevada, on Hunter’s Creek, Washoe County, at an altitude of 6000°.

Occasionally planted as an ornamental plant in the Pacific states, passing into

Sambucus coerulea var. arizonica Sarg.

Sambucus mexicana Sarg., not Presl.

Differing from Sambucus coerulea in its 3—5, usually 3-foliate leaves with usually elliptic long-acuminate leaflets glabrous or slightly pubescent when they appear, 1′—3′ long and ½′—1′ wide, their stipels minute or rudimentary, smaller flower-clusters and fruit not more than ¼′ in diameter.

A tree, often 30° high, with stout spreading branches forming a compact round-topped head, and slender branchlets glabrous or villose pubescent early in the season, usually becoming glabrous. Bark of the trunk about ¼′ thick, the light brown surface tinged with red and broken into long narrow horizontal ridge-like scales. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light brown, with thin lighter-colored sapwood of 2 or 3 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Banks of streams; Arizona, Grand View Trail, Grand Cañon of the Colorado River and near Flagstaff, Coconino County, Globe, Gila County, and banks of the Rialta near Tucson, Pima County; common; New Mexico, near Silver City, Grant County; southern California (San Diego, Los Angeles, Ventura and Kern Counties).

3. Sambucus callicarpa Greene.

Leaves 6′—10′ long, with a stout slightly grooved petiole and 5—7, usually 5, elliptic finely or coarsely serrate leaflets, acuminate and long-pointed at apex, cuneate and often unsymmetric at base, dark green and glabrous on the upper surface, paler and more or less villose-pubescent on the lower surface, especially along the slender midrib, 2½′—5′ long and ½′—2′ wide; petiolules ⅛′—¼′ or that of the terminal leaflet up to 1½′ in length. Flowers on pedicels ⅛′ long, in ovoid to semiorbicular cymes, usually 2½′—3′ long and broad, often somewhat flattened at maturity, on stout peduncles 1½′—3′ in length, about ⅓′ in diameter, with white or yellow slightly obovate petals rounded at apex, and stamens rather shorter than the lobes of the corolla. Fruit about ½′ in diameter, bright red or rarely chestnut color (f. Piperi Sarg.); nutlets smooth.

A tree, occasionally 25°—30° high, with a trunk 10′—12′ in diameter, slender branchlets occasionally puberulous early in the season, becoming glabrous, light brown, separating on the surface into thin scales.

Distribution. River banks in low moist soil, from sea-level in the neighborhood of the coast up to altitudes of 7000°—8000°; coast of Alaska (Skagway), southward along the coast to Marin County, California, and inland to the western slopes of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountains, southward to Amador County; the f. Piperi in western Washington.

2. Viburnum A. L. de Juss.

Trees or shrubs, with tough flexible branchlets, and large winter-buds naked or covered with scales, those of the arborescent North American species enclosed in one pair of valvate scales, the buds containing flower-bearing branches ovoid, swollen below the middle and contracted into a long or short point and subtended by 2 minute lateral generally abortive buds formed in the axils of the last leaves of the previous year, those containing sterile shoots narrow-lanceolate, slightly angled, acute; axillary buds acute, much flattened, and much smaller than the terminal bud. Leaves deciduous (in the American species), without or rarely with stipules, the first pair rudimentary, with small blades and broad boat-shaped petioles, caducous (in the North American arborescent species). Flowers on short bracteolate or bibracteolate pedicels, in terminal or axillary umbel-like flat or panicled cymes, their bracts and bractlets minute, lanceolate, acute, caducous; calyx-tube cylindric, the limb short, equally 5-lobed, persistent on the fruit; corolla rotate, equally 5-lobed, spreading and reflexed after anthesis; stamens inserted on the base of the corolla; filaments elongated, exserted; anthers bright yellow; ovary inferior, 1-celled; style conic, divided at apex into three stigmatic lobes. Fruit 1-celled, with thin sweet acidulous or oily flesh, stone (in the North American arborescent species) coriaceous, oval, short-pointed at apex; much flattened, dull reddish brown, slightly pitted. Seed filling the cavity of the stone, concave on the ventral face, bright reddish brown, the thin coat projected into a red narrow irregular often erose marginal border.

Viburnum with a hundred species is widely and generally distributed through the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, and occurs on the mountains of central and western South America, on the Antilles, the islands of the Malay Archipelago, and Madagascar. Of the fifteen North American species four are small trees. Many of the species produce beautiful flowers and fruits, and are frequently cultivated as ornaments of parks and gardens.

Viburnum is the classical name of one of the European species.

Conspectus of the North American Arborescent Species.

Leaves entire or obscurely crenulate; inflorescence long-stalked; winter-buds elongated, narrow-lanceolate, acuminate, covered with rusty scales.

1. V. nudum (A, C).

Leaves sharply serrate; inflorescence sessile or short-stalked.

Petioles wing-margined; inflorescence sessile; winter-buds long-pointed, scurfy pubescent.

2. V. Lentago (A, C, F).

Petioles usually without margins.

Petioles nearly glabrous; inflorescence short-stalked; winter-buds short-pointed or obtuse, rufous pubescent.

3. V. prunifolium (A, C).

Petioles of early leaves and the short-pointed winter-buds rusty tomentose, inflorescence sessile.

4. V. rufidulum (A, C).

1. Viburnum nudum L.

Leaves broad-elliptic to oval or slightly obovate, or in one form narrow-elliptic (var. angustifolium Torr. & Gray), acute, acuminate or abruptly short-pointed or rarely rounded at apex, cuneate or rounded at base, entire or slightly crenulate, covered when they unfold with rusty scales persistent on the lower side of the midrib and petioles and occasionally on the whole lower surface, thick, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 4′—6′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, with a prominent midrib, slender veins, and slightly thickened and revolute margins; very variable in the size and shape of the leaves and in the amount of their scurfy covering, those of the southern tree form usually larger than the leaves of more northern shrubs; leaves of the var. angustifolium often not more than 2′ long and ½′ wide; petioles slender, ½′ in length. Flowers appearing from the first of May at the south to the middle of June at the north and occasionally also in the autumn, white or pale cream color, about ¼′ wide, in flat or slightly convex cymes with ovate acute bracts and bractlets, 2′—4′ in diameter and about as long or rather shorter than their peduncle. Fruit ripening late in the autumn, globose, pink at first when fully grown, becoming bright blue, ¼′ in diameter.

A tree, rarely 18′—20′ high, with a tall trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, with spreading nearly horizontal branches forming an open head, and slender branchlets scurfy when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous, reddish brown and lustrous during their first season and greenish brown the following year; usually a small or large shrub, and perhaps only a tree on the borders of swamps near Gainesville, Alachua County, and Palatka, Putnam County, Florida. Winter-buds reddish brown, covered with rusty scales, those containing flower-bearing branches, abruptly long pointed, ½′—¾′ in length.

Distribution. Low moist soil usually in the neighborhood of swamps and streams, and on rich hillsides; southern Connecticut (Milford and Derby, New Haven County), southward through the coast and Piedmont region, to De Soto County (near Sebring), Florida, and westward usually in the neighborhood of the coast to the valley of the lower Brazos River, eastern Texas, and northward through western Louisiana to central Arkansas and western Tennessee; occasionally ascending the Appalachian Mountains to altitudes of 2000°; the var. angustifolium from North Carolina up to altitudes of 3000° on the Blue Ridge, to northern Florida.

2. Viburnum Lentago L. Sheepberry. Nannyberry.

Leaves ovate, usually acuminate, with short or elongated points, or sometimes rounded at apex, cuneate, rounded or subcordate at base, and sharply serrate with incurved callous-tipped teeth, when they unfold bronze-green, lustrous, coated on both surfaces of the midrib and on the petioles with thick rufous pubescence, slightly pilose on the upper surface and covered on the lower with short pale hairs, and at maturity bright green and lustrous above, yellow-green and marked by minute black dots below, 2½′—3′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, with a slender midrib, and primary veins connected by conspicuous reticulate veinlets; turning in the autumn before falling deep orange-red or red and orange color; petioles broad, grooved, more or less interruptedly winged or occasionally wingless, 1′—1½′ long, those of the first pair of leaves covered with thick rufous tomentum. Flowers about ¼′ in diameter, slightly fragrant, appearing from the middle of April to the 1st of June in stout-branched scurfy sessile slightly convex cymes 3′—5′ in diameter, with nearly triangular green caducous bracts and bractlets about /16′ in length; corolla pale cream color or nearly white, with ovate lobes acute and slightly erose at apex. Fruit ripening in September on slender drooping stalks, in red-stemmed few-fruited clusters, oval or occasionally globose (var. sphaerocarpum A. Gray), thick-skinned, sweet and rather juicy, black or dark blue, and covered with a glaucous bloom; stone about ⅞′ long and /16′ wide.

A bushy tree, 20°—30° high, with a short trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, slender rather pendulous branches forming a compact round-topped head, and thin divergent branchlets light green, slightly covered with rufous pubescence when they first appear, and in their first winter light red, scurfy, marked by occasional dark orange-colored lenticels and by narrow leaf-scars displaying 3 conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars, becoming in their second year dark reddish brown and sometimes covered with a glaucous bloom. Winter-buds light red, generally covered with pale scurfy pubescence, those containing flower-bearing branchlets ¾′ in length, abruptly contracted into long narrow tapering points. Bark of the trunk reddish brown and irregularly broken into small thick plates divided on their surface into minute thin appressed scales. Wood bad-smelling, heavy, hard, close-grained, dark orange-brown, with thin nearly white sapwood.

Distribution. Rocky hillsides, along the borders of forests, or near the banks of streams and the margins of swamps, in moist soil; valley of the Rivière du Loup, Province of Quebec, to Saskatchewan, and southward through the northern states to southern Pennsylvania, central Ohio, northern Indiana and southern Wisconsin, northeastern Iowa and eastern Nebraska, and along the Appalachian Mountains up to altitudes of 2500° to West Virginia; on the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota, the Black Hills of South Dakota, on the eastern foothills of the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming and on those of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado (Boulder, Boulder County).

Often cultivated as an ornament of parks and gardens in the eastern United States, and occasionally in Europe.

× Viburnum Jackii Rehd. with characters intermediate between Viburnum Lentago and V. prunifolium is now believed to be a hybrid between those species.

3. Viburnum prunifolium L. Black Haw. Stag Bush.

Leaves ovate or rarely obovate, oval or suborbicular, rounded, acute, or short-pointed at apex, cuneate or rounded at base, and usually rather remotely or sometimes finely serrate with rigid incurved callous-tipped teeth, lustrous and tinged with red, glabrous on the lower surface and covered on the upper side of the midrib and on the bright red petioles with scattered reddish hairs when they unfold, and at maturity thick or sometimes coriaceous, dark green and glabrous on the upper surface, pale and glabrous on the lower surface, 1′—3′ long and ½′—3′ wide, with slender primary veins connected by reticulate veinlets; in the autumn turning brilliant scarlet or dark vinous red before falling; petioles terete, grooved, ½′—⅔′ in length, and on vigorous shoots sometimes narrowly wing-margined. Flowers ¼′ in diameter on slender pedicels bibracteolate at apex, in glabrous short-stemmed flat cymes 2′—4′ in diameter, with subulate caducous bracts about /16′ long, usually red above the middle; corolla pure white, with oval to nearly orbicular lobes. Fruit ripening in October, in few-fruited red-stemmed clusters, persistent on the branches until the beginning of winter, oval or slightly obovoid, ½′—⅔′ long or rarely globose, dark blue and covered with a glaucous bloom; stone about ½′ long and ⅓′ wide.

A bushy tree, occasionally 20°—30° high, with a short and usually crooked trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, stout spreading rigid branches beset with slender spine-like branchlets, bright red and glabrous when they first appear, soon turning green, and in their first winter gray tinged with red, covered with a slight bloom, and marked by orange-colored lenticels and by the large lunate leaf-scars displaying 3 fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and ultimately dark brown tinged with red; or often a low intricately branched shrub. Winter-buds short-pointed or obtuse, brown, glabrous or scurfy, those containing flower-bearing branches about ½′ long and ¼′ wide, and about twice as large as those containing sterile branchlets. Bark of the trunk ¼′—⅓′ thick, and broken into thick irregularly shaped plate-like red-brown scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, brittle, close-grained, brown tinged with red, with thick nearly white sapwood of 20—30 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Dry rocky hillsides, fence-rows and the sides of roads; Fairfield County, Connecticut, and the valley of the lower Hudson River, New York, southward to southeastern Virginia and to the Coast and Piedmont regions of North and South Carolina up to altitudes of 2000° to the valley of the Savannah River (near Augusta, Georgia, Richmond County, rare), and through southern Ohio to Indiana, southern Illinois, southern and western Kentucky, Missouri and eastern Kansas; very abundant in Missouri from the northeastern counties southward through the state.

Often cultivated as an ornament of parks and gardens in the eastern United States, and occasionally in western and northern Europe.

4. Viburnum rufidulum Raf. Black Haw.

Leaves elliptic to obovate or oval, rounded, acute, or short-pointed at apex, cuneate or rounded at base, and finely serrate with slender apiculate straight or incurved teeth, covered below and on the wings of the petiole with thick ferrugineous tomentum when they unfold and at maturity coriaceous, dark green and very lustrous above, pale and dull below, usually about 3′ long and ¾′—1½′ wide, with a stout yellow midrib, numerous slender primary veins, and reticulate veinlets more or less covered below throughout the season with rufous tomentum also occasionally found on the upper side of the midrib; petioles stout, grooved, ½′—¾′ long, and margined with broad or narrow wings. Flowers ¼′ in diameter, in sessile 3—5 but usually 4-rayed thick-stemmed ferrugineo-pubescent flat corymbs often 5′—6′ in diameter, with minute subulate bracts and bractlets; corolla creamy white, with orbicular or oblong rounded lobes. Fruit ripening in October, in few-fruited drooping red-stemmed clusters, short-oblong or slightly obovoid, bright blue covered with a glaucous bloom, and ½′—⅔′ long; stone ½′ long and about ⅓′ wide.

A tree, often 40° high, with a trunk 12′—18′ in diameter, short thick branches forming an open irregular head, and stout branchlets marked by numerous small red-brown or orange lenticels, when they first appear more or less coated with ferrugineous tomentum, ashy gray during their first winter, and dark dull red-brown in their second season. Winter-buds ferrugineo-tomentose, those containing flower-bearing branchlets broad-ovoid, full and rounded at base, short-pointed and obtuse at apex, compressed, often ½′ long and ⅓′ wide, and rather larger than those containing sterile branchlets. Bark of the trunk ¼′—½′ thick, separating into narrow rounded ridges divided by numerous cross fissures, and roughened by small plate-like dark brown scales tinged with red. Wood bad-smelling.

Distribution. Dry upland woods and the margins of river-bottom lands; southwestern Virginia and southern Indiana and Illinois to Hernando County, Florida, and through the Gulf States to the valleys of the upper Guadalupe River and of Clear Creek, Brown County, Texas, and to eastern and southwestern Oklahoma (on the Wichita Mountains, Comanche County), eastern Kansas and Central Missouri; most abundant and of its largest size in southern Arkansas, western Louisiana, and eastern Texas.

Occasionally cultivated in the eastern states, and hardy as far north as eastern Massachusetts.