696 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



YQ'~k' long, covered with pale white hairs, and furnished near the middle or toward 

 the apex with 2 acute minute persistent bractlets, in short axillary racemes; calyx, 

 glandular-punctate, covered on the outer surface with pale hairs, 4-lobed, with ovate 

 rounded lobes shorter than the 4 ovate glandular white petals. Fruit ripening in 

 succession from November to April, globose, black, glandular-punctate, usually 

 1-seeded, ^' in diameter, edible, rather juicy, with a sweet agreeable flavor; seeds 

 subglobose, ^' in diameter, with a pale brown chartaceous coat and light olive-green 

 cotyledons. 



A tree, 20-25 high, with a trunk occasionally a foot in diameter, small branches, 

 and terete stout rigid ashy gray branchlets often slightly tinged with red and covered 

 with small wart-like excrescences; or toward the northern limits of its range a low 

 shrub. Bark of the trunk about ^' thick and divided by irregular shallow fissures 

 into broad ridges finally separating on the surface into small thin light brown scales. 

 Wood heavy, hard, strong, very close-grained, brown often tinged with red, with 

 thin darker colored sapwood of 5-6 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Shores of the St. John's River to the southern keys, Florida; 

 nowhere common; on the Bahamas and on several of the Antilles. 



3. Eugenia rhombea, Kr. & Urb. Stopper. 



{Eugenia procera, Silva N. Am. v. 47.) 



Leaves broadly ovate, narrowed into broad points rounded at the apex, and 

 abruptly or gradually narrowed and cuneate at the base, when they unfold thin 



and light red, and at maturity subcoriaceous, conspicuously marked with black dots, 

 olive-green on the upper and paler on the lower surface, 2'-2^' long and I'-l^' wide, 

 with narrow midribs, unfolding in Florida in May; their petioles narrow-winged, 

 ^'-\' long. Flowers \' in diameter, appearing in Florida in April or May on slender 

 glandular pedicels \'-^' long and furnished at the apex with 2 lanceolate acute per- 

 sistent bracts ciliate on the margins, in sessile axillary many-flowered clusters; calyx- 

 tube, much shorter than the limb, divided into 4 glandular narrow lobes rounded at 

 the apex and one half the length of the broadly ovate rounded glandular white petals. 

 Fruit ripening in Florida from September to November, '-!' in diameter, slightly 

 glandular-roughened, orange color, with a bright red cheek when fully grown, be- 



