KCEBERLINIACE^ 681 



matic inner bark. Wood very heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, dark 

 red-brown, with thick light brown or yellow sapwood of 25-30 layers of annual 



growth. The bitter acrid inner bark is the wild cinnamon bark of commerce. It 

 has a pleasant cinnamon-like odor and is an aromatic stimulant and tonic. 



Distribution. In Florida common and widely distributed on the southern keys, 

 usually growing in the shade of other trees. 



XLI. KCEBERLINIACEiB. 



An intricately branched almost leafless tree or shrub, with thin red-brown 

 scaly bark, stout alternate glabrous branchlets covered with pale green bark 

 and terminating in sharp rigid straight or slightly curved sjDines. Leaves mi- 

 nute, early deciduous, alternate, narrowly obovate, rounded at the a23ex. 

 Flowers perfect, on slender club-shaped puberulous pedicels from the axils of 

 minute scarious deciduous bracts, in short umbel-like racemes below the ends 

 of the branches ; calyx of 3 or 4 minute sepals imbricated in the bud, decidu- 

 ous ; petals 4, convolute in the bud, hypogynous, obovate or oblong, subunguic- 

 ulate, white, much longer than the sepals ; disk ; stamens 8, free, hypogy- 

 nous, as long as the petals ; filaments thickened in the middle, subulate at the 

 ends ; anthers oval, attached on the back near the base, 2-celled, the cells 

 opening longitudinally; ovary ovoid, 2-celled, contracted at the base into a 

 short stalk and above into a simple subulate style ; stigma terminal, obtuse, 

 slightly emarginate ; ovules numerous, adnate in several series to the fleshy 

 placenta, horizontal or dependent, anatropous. Fruit a 2-celled berry, black at 

 maturity, subglobose, tipped with the remnants of the pointed style ; flesh thin 

 and succulent, the cells 1 or 2-seeded by abortion. Seed vertical, circinate- 

 cochleate ; seed-coat crustaceous, slightly rugose, striate ; albumen thin ; 

 embryo annular ; cotyledons semiterete ; the radicle ascending. 



The family is represented by a single genus. 



1. KCEBERLINIA, Zucc. 



Characters of the family. 



Kceberlinia with one species is North American. 



The generic name is in honor of L. Koeberlin, a German botanist. 



