AQUIFOLIACE^ 



613 



numerous straggling stout or slender stems frequently only a few feet high or often 

 30-40 high. Winter-buds about Y long. Bark of young stems and of large 

 branches thin, the surface separating into small persistent scales l'-2' long, becom- 

 ing near the base of old trees deeply furrowed, dark red-brown, 1' thick, and broken 



on the surface into short broad scales. Wood heavy, close-grained, moderately 

 hard, brittle, not strong, brown tinged with red, with thick lighter colored sap- 

 wood of 40-50 layers of annual growth ; burning with a clear bright flame, and valued 

 as fuel. 



Distribution. Damp sandy peat soil in swamps almost submerged for several 

 months in the year, or often in shallow rarely overflowed swamps; coast region of 

 the south Atlantic states from the vallev of the Savannah River to northern Florida, 

 and through the maritime Pine belt of the Gulf coast to eastern Louisiana. 



XXXI. AQUIFOLIACEiE. 



Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, scaly buds, and alternate simple entire 

 crenate or pungently toothed petiolate persistent or deciduous leaves, with 

 minute stipules. Flowers axillary, solitary or cymose, small, greenish, dioecious ; 

 calyx 4 6-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud, hypogynous ; petals 4-6, imbri- 

 cated in the bud ; disk ; stamens as many as and alternate with the petals and 

 adnate to the base of the corolla ; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening 

 longitudinally, small and sterile in the pistillate flower ; pistil compound ; ovary 

 4 8-celled, minute and rudimentary in the staminate flower ; style short or ; 

 stigmas as many as the cells of the ovary, nearly confluent ; ovule generally 

 solitary in each cell, suspended, anatropous ; raphe usually dorsal, the micro- 

 pyle superior. Fruit a drupe, with as many indehiscent bony or crustaceous 

 1-seeded nutlets as carpels ; sarcocarp thin and fleshy. Seed narrowed at the 

 ends, suspended ; seed-coat membranaceous, pale brown ; embryo minute in the 

 apex of the copious fleshy albumen ; cotyledons plain ; the radicle superior. 



The Holly family with five genera is distributed in temperate and tropical 

 regions of the two hemispheres. Of the five genera now recognized, only Ilex 

 is important in the number of species or is widely distributed. 



