MYRTACE^ 



695 



end of their second winter, and often turning red or partly red before falling. 

 Flowers appearing in Florida from midsummer until early autumn, i' in diameter, 

 on short thick pedicels, in short rufous pubescent racemes clustered in the axils of 

 old or fallen leaves, with minute lanceolate acute persistent bracts, and broadly ovate 

 acute bractlets immediately below the flowers; calyx glandular-punctate, pubescent 

 on the outer surface, with 4 ovate rounded lobes much shorter than the 4 ovate white 

 petals rounded at the apex, ciliate on the margins, and glandular-punctate. Fruit 

 subglobose to short-oblong, black, glandular-roughened, crowned with the large 

 calyx-lobes, usually 1-seeded and about ^' in diameter, with thin aromatic flesh; 

 seeds ^' in diameter, with a thick pale brown lustrous cartilaginous coat and a pale 

 olive-green embryo. 



A shrubby tree, in Florida rarely 20 high, with a short trunk occasionally a foot 

 in diameter, small mostly erect branches, and terete slender branchlets coated at first 

 with rufous pubescence, becoming at the end of a few months ashy gray or gray 

 tinged with red, and often more or less twisted or contorted. Bark of the trunk 

 rarely more than ^' thick, light brown tinged with red, and broken into small thick 

 square scales. Wood very heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, dark 

 brown shaded with red, with thick lighter colored sapwood of 15-20 layers of annual 

 growth; sometimes used for fuel. 



Distribution. Cape Canaveral to the southern keys, and from the banks of the 

 Caloosa River to Cape Sable, Florida; one of the commonest plants on the keys, 

 forming on the coral rock a large part of the shrubby second growth now occupying 

 ground from which the original forest has been removed; also on the Bahamas and 

 on several of the Antilles. 



2. Eugenia axillaris, Willd. Stopper. White Stopper. 



(^Eugenia monticola, Silva N. Am. v. 45.) 



Leaves ovate, gradually or abruptly narrowed at the apex into short wide points, 

 rounded at the narrowed base, thick and coriaceous, dark green on the upper, paler 



and covered with minute black dots on the lower surface, li'-2^' long, 1' wide, witli 

 broad midribs deeply impressed above; their petioles stout, slightly winged, about 

 y long. Flo-wers appearing at midsummer, about i' in diameter, on stout pedicels 



