686 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



tips, furnished in their axils with short tufts of rufous hairs and occasionally with 

 clusters of chartaceous spines, gradually passing into thin oblong ovate or obovate 

 larger sepals, niucronate or rounded at the apex and closely imbricated in many 

 ranks; petals 25-35. obovate-spatulate, obtuse, entire, thick and fleshy, creamy white, 

 I' long and much reflexed after anthesis; stamens, with linear anthers emarginate 

 at the ends, and filaments united for half their length to the walls of the calyx-tube, 

 those of the exterior rows joined below into a long tube, surrounding the stout col- 

 umnar style glandular at the base and divided at the apex into 12-15 green stigmas. 

 Fruit ripening in August, ovate or slightly obovate, 2^' long, 1^' wide, truncate and 

 covered at the apex by the depressed pale scar left by the falling of the flower, light 

 red at maturity, separating into 3 or 4 fleshy valves bright red on their inner sur- 

 face and inclosing the bright scarlet juicy mass of the enlarged funiculi and innu- 

 merable seeds; seeds obovate, rounded, ^' long, lustrous, dark chestnut-brown. 



A tree, 50-60 high, with a trunk sometimes 2 in diameter, thickest below the 

 middle and tapering gradually toward the ends, marked by transverse superficial 

 lines into rings 4'-8' long, representing the amount of longitudinal growth, 8-12- 

 ribbed at the base, with obtuse ribs 4'-5' broad, and at the summit 18-20-ribbed, with 

 obtuse deep compressed ribs, branchless or furnished above the middle with a few, 

 usually 2 or 3, stout alternate or sometimes opposite upright branches shorter but 

 otherwise resembling the principal stem composed of a thick tough green epidermis, 

 a fleshy covering 3'-6' thick saturated with bitter juice, and a circle of bundles of 

 wood fibres making, with annual layers of exogenous growth, dense tough elastic 

 columns placed opposite the depressions between the ribs, ^'-3' in diameter and fre- 

 quently united by branches growing at irregular intervals between them, the woody 



frame remaining standing after the death. of the plant and the decomposition of its 

 fleshy covering. Areolae pale, elevated, about 1' in diameter, bearing clusters of 

 stout straight spines with large dark fulvous bases, sulcate or angled, tinged with 

 red, with thick stout spines in the centre of each cluster, the lowest 4 horizontal 

 or slightly inclined downward, the lowest being the longest and stoutest and some- 

 times 11' long and ^L' thick, the upper shorter, more slender and slightly turned 

 upward, with a row of shorter and thinner radial spines 12-16 in number surrounding 

 the central group. Wood of the columns strong, very light, rather coarse-grained, 



