734 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



pale on the lower surface, with broad midribs yellow and conspicuous on the under 

 side, slender primary veins and reticulate veinlets, appearing in the summer or early 

 autumn and falling before the appearance of the flowers the following year; their 

 petioles stout, grooved, \'-^' long. Flowers fragrant, usually opening in Novem- 

 ber or occasionally as early as July, on slender elongated pedicels without bractlets, 

 developed from the axils of linear acute caducous bracts, in terminal rusty brown 

 puberulous panicles 3'-4' long and broad, their lower branches often from the axils 

 of upper leaves; calyx ovate, divided nearly to the base into 5 ovate acute lobes 

 scarious and ciliate on the margins and marked on the back with dark lines; co- 

 rolla 5-parted, with oblong rounded divisions sinistrorsely overlapping, or with 1 lobe 

 wholly outside and 1 inside in the bud, conspicuously marked with red spots on the 

 inner surface near the base, becoming reflexed; stamens, with short broad filaments, 

 contracted by a geniculate fold in the middle, and large orange-colored anthers 



l^ J90 



longer than the filaments, their cells opening almost to the base; ovary globose, 

 glandular, gradually contracted into a long slender style tipped with a simple stigma. 

 Fruit ripening in early spring, globose, i' in diameter, tipped with the remnants 

 of the style, and roughened by resinous glands, dark brown at first when fully 

 grown, ultimately becoming black and lustrous, with a thin-walled crustaceous 

 brown stone; seed conspicuously lobed at the base, bright red-brown, about ^' in 

 diameter. 



A slender tree, in Florida rarely more than 20 high, with a short trunk i'-S' in 

 diameter, numerous thin upright branches forming a narrow head, and stout terete 

 often contorted branchlets, rusty brown or dark orange-colored and slightly puber- 

 ulous at first, becoming in their second year dark brown or ashy gray, and marked 

 by many minute circular lenticels and by thin nearly orbicular flat leaf-scars dis- 

 playing in the centre a group of fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds rusty 

 brown; terminal slender, acuminate, ^'-5' long; axillary globose, minute, nearly im- 

 mersed in the bark. Bark of the trunk about ^' thick, light gray or nearly white, 

 roughened by minute lenticels, and separating into large thin papery plates. Wood 

 heavy, hard, very close-grained, rich brown beautifully marked by darker medul- 

 lary rays, with thick lighter colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Florida, from Mosquito Inlet to the southern keys on the east 



