740 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



Distribution. Rich hummock soil; shores of Bay Biscayne, and on several of the 

 southern keys, Florida; also on the Bahamas and on many of the Antilles, 



3. BUMELIA, Sw. 



Sniall trees or shruhs, with terete usually spinescent branchlets, scaly buds, and 

 fibrous roots. Leaves often fascicled on spur-like lateral branchlets, conduplicate in 

 the bud, coriaceous or membranaceous, short-petiolate, obovate, obtuse, or elliptical, 

 clothed on the lower surface with silky pubescence or tomentum, or nearly glabrous, 

 with rather inconspicuous veins arcuate near the entire margins and conspicuous 

 reticulate veinlets, deciduous or persistent. Flowers on slender clavate ebracteolate 

 pedicels from the axils of lanceolate acute scarious deciduous bracts, in many-flow- 

 ered crowded fascicles in the axils of existing leaves or from the leafless nodes of 

 previous years; calyx ovate to subcampanulate, 5-lobed, the lobes in one series im- 

 bricated in the bud, ovate or oblong, rounded at the apex, nearly equal; corolla eam- 

 panulate, white, with 5 spreading broadly ovate lobes rounded at the apex and fur- 

 nished on each side at the base with an acute ovate or lanceolate petaloid appendage; 

 stamens 5; filaments filiform; anthers ovate-sagittate, attached on the back below 

 the middle, the cells opening by subextrorse slits; staminodia petal-like, ovate or 

 ovate-lanceolate, entire or obscurely denticulate, flattened or keeled on the back, 

 sometimes furnished at the base with a pair of minute scales; ovary hirsute, ovate 

 to ovate-conical, gradually or abruptly contracted into a slender short or elongated 

 simple style stigmatic at the acute apex. Fruit oblong-obovate or globose, black, 

 solitary or in 2 or 3-fruited clusters; flesh thin and dry or succulent. Seed ovate or 

 oblong, apiculate or rounded at the apex, without albumen; seed-coat thick, crusta- 

 ceous, light brown, smooth and shining, folded more or less conspicuously on the 

 back into 2 lobes rounded at the apex; embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyle- 

 dons thick and fleshy, hemispherical, usually consolidated; radicle very short, turned 

 toward the basilar or subbasilar orbicular or elliptical hilum. 



Bumelia with about twenty species is confined to the New World, where it is dis- 

 tributed from the southern United States through the West Indies to Mexico, Central 

 America, and Brazil. Of the five species in the United States four are small trees. 



Bumelia produces' hard heavy strong wood, that of the North American species 

 containing bands of numerous large open ducts defining the layers of annual growth 

 and connected by conspicuous branched groups of similar ducts, presenting in cross- 

 section a reticulate appearance. 



The generic name is from fiovfxeXla, a classical name of the Ash-tree. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT SPECIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Lower surface of the leaves pubescent or tomentose. 



Leaves oblanceolate-spatulate to cuneate-obovate, covered below with pale or ferrugine- 

 ous lustrous pubescence. 1. B. tenax (C). 



Leaves oblong'-obovate to cuneate-obovate, dull tomentose on the lower surface. 



2. B. lanuginosa (A, C). 

 Leaves glabrous or nearly so. 



Leaves oblanceolate to oblong'-obovate, acute or acuminate, finely reticulate-venulose, 

 thin, deciduous. 3. B. lycioides (A, C). 



Leaves spatulate or linear-oblong to broadly obovate-cuneate, obtuse, obscurely reticu- 

 late-venulose, coriaceous, persistent. 4. B. angustifolia (D, E). 



