ANACARDIACE^ 601 



A tree, occasionally 20-30 high, with a trunk 6'-8' in diameter and often irregu- 

 larly ridged, the rounded ridges spreading near the surface of the ground into broad 

 buttresses, slender erect branches forming a narrow open oblong head, and slender 

 upright branchlets light green more or less deeply shaded with red when they first 

 appear, becoming in their first winter light gray-brown faintly tinged with red and 

 roughened by numerous oblong pale lenticels, ultimately ashy gray and marked at 

 the end of their second year by the semiorbicular elevated leaf-scars displaying the 

 ends of 4 fibro-vascular bundle-scars superposed in pairs. "Winter-buds ovate, 

 obtuse, covered with chestnut-brown scales, about ^^g' long. Bark of the trunk 

 dark red-brown, about ^^' thick, separating into large thin scales, in falling display- 

 ing the light brown inner bark. Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, rich dark 

 brown streaked with yellow, with thick bright yellow sap wood; in Florida occasion- 

 ally manufactured into canes, and used as fuel. 



Distribution. Common in low woods from the shores of Bay Biscayne to the 

 Marquesas Keys, Florida; on the Bahama Islands, and on many of the Antilles. 



XXIX. ANACARDIACEiB. 



Trees and shrubs, with terete pithy branchlets, resinous juice, and alter- 

 nate simple or pinnate leaves without stipules, and scaly or naked buds. 

 Flowers regular, minute, dioecious, polygamo-dioecious, or polygamo-monoe- 

 cious ; calyx-lobes and petals 5, imbricated in the bud ; stamens as many as 

 the petals and alternate and inserted with them on the margin or under an 

 hypogynous annular fleshy slightly 5-lobed disk ; filaments filiform ; anthers 

 oblong, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally ; ovary 1-celled ; 

 ovule solitary, suspended from the apex of a slender funicle rising from the 

 base of the cell, anatropous ; micropyle superior ; styles 3, united or spread- 

 ing ; stigmas terminal. Fruit drupaceous. Seed without albumen; seed-coat 

 thin and membranaceous ; embryo filling the cavity of the seed ; cotyledons 

 flat, accumbent on the short radicle. 



The Sumach family of nearly sixty genera is mostly confined to the warmer 

 parts of the earth's surface and contains the Mango, Pistacia, and other im- 

 portant trees. In the flora of the United States three genera have arborescent 

 representatives. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Flowers usually dioecious by abortion ; styles lateral, spreading- ; pedicels of the abortive 

 flowers becoming long and plumose at maturity ; fruit compressed, very oblique ; leaves 

 simple, deciduous. 1. Cotinus. 



Flowers mostly dioecious ; styles terminal, short, united ; stigma 3-lobed ; fruit ovate, gla- 

 brous ; leaves unequally pinnate, persistent. 2. Metopium. 



Flowers polygamo-dioecious or polygamo-monoecious ; styles terminal, spreading ; fruit 

 usually globose, naked or clothed with acrid hairs; leaves unequally pinnate, trifoliolate 

 or rarely simple, deciduous or rarely persistent. 3. Rhus. 



1. COTINUS, L. 



Small trees or shrubs, with scaly bark, small acute winter-buds, with numerous 

 imbricated s'cales, fleshy roots, and strong-smelling juice. Leaves simple, petiolate, 

 oval, obovate-oblong or nearly orbicular, glabrous or more or less pilose-pubescent, 

 deciduous. Flowers regular, dioecious by abortion or rarely polygamo-dioecious. 



