Diospyros.] EBENACE® (Hiern). 477 
flowers 4-16-celled, usually 8- or 10-celled and with solitary ovules; 
styles 1-4 or in the male flowers obsolete. Fruit usually globose, 
oblong or conical, often pulpy and edible; seeds 1-10, usually oblong 
with dusky more or less shining testa ; albumen cartilaginous, white 
and equable or in some species ruminated. 
Trees or shrubs with alternate, or in a few species opposite, entire leaves, and 
axillary or lateral inflorescence. 
Species more than 200, widely distributed over the warmer regions of both 
the eastern and western hemispheres. * 
Male flowers cymose ; stamens 10-16; leaves elliptic- 
oblong or obovate-oblong —... ie We vs 
Flowers solitary; stamens about 80; leaves obovate- 
rotund ,.. ‘re +. a a is ... (2) rotundifolia. 
(1) mespiliformis. 
1. D. mespiliformis (Hochst. in Plant. Schimp. Abyss. Exsice. 
Sect. ii. nn. 655, 1243); a shrub or tree, ranging up to 50 ft. high 
with a roundish head ; trunk nearly straight, ranging up to 12 ft. in 
diam. ; bark becoming rough and much cracked; wood compact, 
very hard, heavy, white but often black in the centre; branches 
terete, more or less patent, glabrate ; branchlets alternate, subterete, 
erect-patent, pallid or ashy, glabrescent ; young shoots and inflores- 
cence ferruginous-tomentose ; leaves alternate, elliptic-oblong or 
obovate-oblong, obtusely pointed at the apex, somewhat narrowed or 
nearly rounded and sometimes unequal at the base, thinly coriaceous, 
rather glossy especially above, glabrescent or thinly silky beneath, 
entire, often somewhat reddish, deciduous, or sometimes evergreen, 
2-6 in. long, 2-22 in. broad, midrib depressed, veins delicate ; young 
leaves membranous, very soft, often dusky-red ; petioles 1-8 in. long. 
Inflorescence axillary, short; flowers white or slightly greenish, 
dicecious. Male inflorescence few- or many-flowered, ferruginous- 
tomentose, 3—1 in. long ; flowers about } in. long, usually tetra- 
merous or pentamerous; calyx about 1 in. long, cleft about half-way 
down, campanulate or narrowly so, hairy on both sides ; lobes ovate 
or lanceolate ; corolla urceolate-oblong, shortly cleft, silky outside, 
glabrous within ; lobes spreading, pointed ; stamens 10-16, often in 
pairs, nearly glabrous but with a narrow band of pale hairs along the 
back of the anthers; filaments short, inserted at the base of the 
corolla; connective produced at the apex ; pollen spheroidal, smooth ; 
ovary rudimentary, hairy. Female flowers solitary or in very 
short 2- or 3-flowered cymes; peduncles }—2 in. long; bracts 
narrow, caducous ; calyx campanulate, deeply lobed, hairy on both 
sides ; lobes ovate, acuminate, with undulated margins, 3-6, usually 
4 or 5; corolla pubescent outside, glabrous within, rather small but 
shortly exceeding the calyx; lobes pointed; staminodes 6-8, 
glabrous, inserted in one row at the base of the corolla; ovary 
ovoid or conical, silky, 4- or 8-celled, terminating in 2 short 
hirsute bilobed styles; ovules solitary in the cells. Fruit sub- 
globose or spheroidal, solitary, subsessile, 3-8-celled, rather hard, 
glossy, glabrate, often slightly wrinkled, green, orange-yellow, olive- 
