SAPOTACE^ 



743 



brous. This is a small tree, 18-25 high, with a short trunk covered with red-brown 

 bark divided into long appressed ridge-like scales broken into minute flakes, and an 

 inhabitant of dry gravelly mountain slopes in the neighborhood of streams. Wood 

 of this form heavy, hard, very close-grained, light rich brown or yellow, with thick 

 lighter colored sapwood. 



3. Bumelia lycioides, Gaertn. f. Ironwood. Buckthorn. 



Leaves oblanceolate to oblong-obovate, acute, acuminate, or rarely rounded at 

 the apex, gradually narrowed at the base, bright green and glabrous on the upper, 



li(i'jQb 



light green and sometimes coated at first on the lower surface with pale pubescence, 

 thin and rather firm, finely reticulate-venulose, l|^'-4' long, \'-^\' wide, with pale 

 thin conspicuous midribs and primary veins, deciduous in the autumn; their petioles 

 slender, slightly grooved, about \' long. Flo"wers appearing at midsummer on slen- 

 der glabrous pedicels ^' long, in crowded many-flowered fascicles; calyx glabrous, 

 ovate-campanulate, with rounded lobes rather shorter than the corolla; staminodia 

 broadly ovate, denticulate, nearly as long as the narrow appendages; ovary ovate, 

 slightly hairy toward the base only, gradually contracted into a short thick style. 

 Fruit ripening and falling in the autumn, ovoid or obovate, about |' in length; flesh 

 thick; seed oblong, rounded at the apex, nearly 1' long. 



A tree, 2o-30 high, with a short trunk rarely more than 6' in diameter, stout 

 flexible branches usually unarmed or furnished with short stout slightly curved spines 

 occasionally developing into leafy spinescent branches, and short thick spur-like lateral 

 branchlets slightly puberulous when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous, light 

 red-brown, rather lustrous and marked by numerous pale lenticels, and in their second 

 year dark or light brown tinged with red or ashy gray. Winter-buds minute, ob- 

 tuse, nearly immersed in the bark, with pale dark brown glabrous scales. Bark of 

 the trunk thin, light red-brown, the generally smooth surface broken into small thin 

 persistent scales. Wood heavy, hard, not strong, close-grained, light brown or 

 yellow, with thick lighter colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Low moist soil along the borders of swamps and streams; coast 

 of Virginia and southern Illinois to Mosquito Inlet and the shores of Caloosa River, 

 Florida, and through southern Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas, to the valley of the Rio 

 Concho. 



