730 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



8'-10' in diameter, separating a foot or two above the ground into several stout spread- 

 ing branches, and branehlets light red and thickly coated with pubescence when they 

 first appear, becoming dark red-brown and covered with small plate-like scales; 



often a broad irregularly shaped bush, with numerous contorted stems. Bark of 

 young stems and of the branches thin, tinged with red, separating into large papery 

 scales exposing the light red or flesh-colored inner bark, becoming at the base of 

 old trunks sometimes Y thick, deeply furrowed, dark reddish brown, and broken into 

 thick square plates. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, brown tinged with red, with 

 a lighter colored sapwood of 10-12 layers of annual growth; sometimes used in 

 Texas for the handles of small tools and in the manufacture of mathematical instru- 

 ments. 



Distribution. Dry limestone hills; Travis County and the valley of the Rio 

 Blanco, Hays County, westward to the Guadaloupe and Eagle Mountains, Texas; 

 common on the mountains of Nuevo Leon and southward in Mexico. 



3. Arbutus Arizonica, Sarg. Madrona. 



Leaves lanceolate to rarely oblong, acute or rounded and apiculate at the apex, 

 and wedge-shaped or occasionally rounded at the base, with thickened entire or 

 rarely denticulate margins, when they unfold membranaceous, tinged with red, and 

 slightly puberulous, especially on the petioles and margins, and at maturity thin, firm 

 and rigid, light green on the upper, pale on the lower surface, l^'-3' long and ^'-1' 

 wide, with slender yellow midribs and obscure reticulate veinlets, appearing in May 

 and after the summer rains in September, and persistent for at least a year; their 

 petioles slender, often 1' long. Flowers Y long, with corollas much contracted in 

 the middle, and glabrous porulose ovaries, opening in May on short stout hairy 

 pedicels from the axils of conspicuous ovate rounded scarious bracts collected in 

 rather loose terminal clusters 2'-21' long and broad, their lower branches from the 

 axils of upper leaves. Fruit ripening in October and November, globose or oblong, 

 dark orange-red, granulate, |-' in diameter, with thin sweetish flesh, and a papery 

 usually incompletely developed stone; seeds compressed, puberulous. 



A tree, 40 -50 high, with a tall straight trunk 18'-24' in diameter, stout spread- 

 ing branches forming a rather compound round-topped head, and thick tortuous 



