SAPOTACE^ 737 



species produce valuable timber or edible and agreeable fruits. From Iso- 

 nandra Gutta, Hook., of the Malay Peninsula, gutta-percha is obtained. Five 

 genera are represented by trees in the flora of the United States. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Calyx of 5 sepals in a single series. 



Staminodia 1 in each sinus of the corolla. 



Appendages of the corolla ; staminodia slender, scale-like. 1. Sideroxylum. 



Appendages of the corolla present ; staminodia petaloid. 



Staminodia linear, fimbriate ; seeds with copious albiimen. 2. Dipholis. 



Staminodia petaloid, entire or denticulate ; seeds without albumen. 3. Bumelia. 

 Staminodia ; appendages of the corolla ; leaves covered below with lustrous copper- 

 colored or golden pubescence. 4. Chrysophyllum. 

 Calyx of 6-8 sepals in 2 series ; corolla with 6-8 lobes, and 2 appendages in each sinus 

 inside of a scale-like or petaloid staminodia. 5. Mimusops. 



1. SIDEROXYLUM, L. 



Trees, with terete branchlets, naked buds, and long-petiolate persistent leaves, the 

 veins remote and connected by reticulate veinlets. Flowers minute, on ebracteolate 

 pedicels from the axils of minute deciduous bracts, in crowded many-flowered axil- 

 lary fascicles; calyx 5-parted, the divisions in one series, nearly equal, corolla fur- 

 nished with 5 or 6 staminodia, and 5 or rarely 6-lobed ; filaments slender, elongated, 

 bent outward at the apex; anthers oblong, the cells at first extrorse, sometimes 

 becoming sublateral; staminodia linear, scale-like; ovary contracted into a subulate 

 style tipped with a minute slightly 5-lobed stigma. Fruit dry, 1-seeded, oblong, with 

 thin coriaceous flesh. Seed obovate or oblong; seed-coat lustrous, light brown, folded 

 on the inner face into 2 obscure lobes rounded at the apex; hilum elevated, subbasilar 

 or lateral, oblong or linear; embryo erect in thick fleshy albumen; radicle much 

 shorter than the oblong fleshy cotyledons. 



Sideroxylum with about sixty species is widely distributed through the tropics of 

 the two hemispheres, and occurs with a few species in Australia, Madeira, southern 

 Africa, New Zealand, and Norfolk Island, a single species reaching the shores of 

 southern Florida. Some of the species are large and valuable timber-trees, producing 

 hard handsome durable wood. 



The generic name, from ai5r)pos and ^vXov, is in reference to the hardness of the 

 wood. 



1. Sideroxylum Mastichodendron, Jacq. Mastic. 



Leaves mostly clustered near the ends of the branches, appearing irregularly 

 from early spring until autumn, oval, acute or rounded and slightly emarginate at the 

 apex, and gradually narrowed at the base, with thickened cartilaginous slightly 

 involute margins, when they unfold silky-canescent beneath, and at matiu-ity thin 

 and firm, glabrous, bright green and lustrous above, lustrous and yellow-green 

 below, 3'-5' long, l^'-2' wide, with broad pale conspicuous midribs deeply impressed 

 on the upper side and inconspicuous primary veins arcuate near the margins; their 

 petioles slender, I'-l^'' long. Flowers usually appearing in Florida in the autumn 

 and also in early spring and during the summer on stout orange-colored puberulous 

 pedicels from the axils of minute acute scarious bracts usually deciduous before the 

 opening of the flower-buds, from the axils of young leaves or on the branches of the 

 previous year from leafless nodes; calyx yellow-green, puberulous on the outer 



