616 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



first with dense silky pubescence persistent until the end of the second or third year, 

 ultimately dark brown and marked b}^ occasional lenticels; or often a low shrub. 

 "Winter-buds minute, acute, with lanceolate scales thickly coated with pale silky 

 pubescence. Bark of the trunk about ^' thick, dark gray, thickly covered and ^ 

 roughened by lenticels. Wood light, soft, close-grained, not strong, pale brown, 

 with thick nearly white sapwood. 



Distribution. Cold swamps and on their borders, in rich moist soil, or occasion- 

 ally on the high sandy banks of Pine-barren streams; southern Virginia southward in J 

 the immediate neighborhood of the coast to the shores of Bay Biscayne and Tampa 

 Bay, Florida, and along the Gulf coast to western Louisiana; nowhere abundant on 

 the Atlantic coast; most common in western Florida and southern Alabama; passing j 



through forms with elongated narrow leaves into the variety myrtifolia, Sarg. This 

 is a low shrub or occasionally a slender wide-branched tree, with pale nearly white 

 bark, puberulous branchlets, and crowded generally entire mucronate leaves ^'-1' 

 long, \' wide, with strongly reflexed margins, very short petioles, and broad promi- 

 nent midribs; an inhabitant of Cypress swamps and Pine-barren ponds or their mar- 

 gins, in the neighborhood of the coast. North Carolina to Lotiisiana; perhaps to be 

 considered a distinct species. 



3. Ilex vomitoria. Ait. Cassena. Yaupon. 



Leaves elliptical to elliptical-oblong, obtuse, coarsely and remotely crenulate- 

 serrate, coriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, pale and opaque below, l'-2' 

 long, \'-V broad, persistent for two or three years, generally falling just before the 

 appearance of the new growth of their third season; their petioles short, broad, and 

 grooved. Flowers on slender club-shaped glabrous pedicels, with minute bractlets 

 at the base, in short glabrous cymes on branchlets of the previous year, those of the 

 staminate plant short-stemmed and many-flowered, those of the pistillate plant ses- 

 sile and 1 or 2-flowered; calyx-lobes rounded, obtuse, often slightly ciliate; ovary 

 contracted below the broad flat stigma. Fruit produced in great abundance, on 

 stems not more than \' long, ripening late in the autumn or in early winter, soon 

 deciduous, or persistent until spring, scarlet, nearly globose, about \' in diameter; 

 nutlets obtuse at the ends, and prominently few-ribbed oii the back and sides. 



