622 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



dark brown or nearly black, with thick light brown sapwood of 75-80 layers of 

 annual growth. 



Distribution. Common and generally distributed over the keys of southern 



Florida from the Marquesas toMetacombe Key; also in Cuba, Porto Rico, Trinidad, 

 and southern Mexico. A form (var. glaucescens, Sarg.) with smaller less coriaceous 

 very glaucous leaves occurs in Cuba. 



3. SCHiEFFERIA, Jacq. 



Glabrous trees or shrubs, with slender rigid terete branches and small obtuse 

 buds. Leaves alternate, or fascicled on short spur-like branchlets, entire, obovate or 

 spatulate, acute and minutely apiculate or gradually narrowed to the rounded or emar- 

 ginate apex, cuneate below, persistent, without stipules. Flowers dioecious, pedi- 

 cellate in axillary clusters from buds covered by scale-like persistent bracts; calyx 

 4-lobed, the lobes orbicular, persistent, much shorter than the 4 hypogynous, oblong- 

 obtuse, white or greenish white petals; stamens 4, hypogynous, inserted under the 

 margin of the small inconspicuous disk opposite the lobes of the calyx, wanting 

 in the pistillate flower; filaments subulate, incurved; anthers oblong-ovate; ovary 

 2-celled, ovoid, sessile, free, rudimentary in the staminate flower; style very short, 

 gradually enlarged into the large 2-lobed stigma, with spreading lobes; ovule soli- 

 tary, ascending; raphe thin, ventral; the micropyle inferior. Fruit a small 2-seeded 

 fleshy drupe, ovate or obovate, crowned with the remnants of the persistent style, 

 indistinctly 2-lobed by longitudinal grooves, slightly flattened; flesh thin and tuber- 

 culate; nutlets 2, obovate, rounded at the ends, with a thick bony shell. Seed 

 solitary, ascending; seed-coat membranaceous; albumen fleshy; cotyledons broad, 

 foliaceous; the radicle very short, inferior, next the hilum. 



Two species of SchsefPeria are recognized, one a small tree widely distributed 

 through the Antilles and reaching the islands of southern Florida and central 

 America, the second a little-known shrub of the arid region of western Texas and 

 northern Mexico. 



The generic name is in honor of Jakob Christian Schaeffer (1718-1790), the dis- 

 tinguished German naturalist. 



