748 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



coated when they first appear with dark rufous pubescence, becoming glabrous and 

 light orange-brown at the end of a few weeks, and in their second year covered with 

 thick ashy gray or light red-brown scaly bark and marked by elevated obcordate 

 leaf-scars displaying 3 large dark conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter- 

 buds ovate, acute, rusty-tomentose. Bark of the trunk about \' thick and irreg- 

 ularly divided by deep fissures into ridges rounded on the back and broken into small 

 nearly square plates. "Wood very heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, rich very 

 dark brown, with light-colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Florida only on the southern keys; not common; also on the Ba- 

 hama Islands. 



LIII. EBENACEiE. 



Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and alternate simple entire leaves with- 

 out stipules. Flowers dicecious or polygamous, regular, axillary, articulate with 

 the bibracteolate pedicels ; calyx persistent ; corolla hypogynous, regular ; 

 disk ; stamens more numerous than the lobes of the corolla, inserted on its 

 base, fewer and rudimentary or in the pistillate flower ; filaments short ; 

 anthers introrse, 2-celled ; ovary several-celled ; ovules 2 in each cell, sus- 

 pended from its apex, anatropous ; raphe dorsal ; micropyle superior. Fruit a 

 1 or several-seeded berry. Seeds with copious albumen ; embryo axile. 



The Ebony family with five genera and a large number of species is widely 

 distributed in tropical and temperate regions, with two representatives of its 

 most important genus, Diospyros, in the flora of the United States. 



1. DIOSPYROS, L. 



Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets without terminal buds, scaly axillary buds, 

 coriaceous leaves re volute in the bud, and fibrous roots. Flowers mostly dicecious, 

 from the axils of leaves of the year or of the previous year; staminate smaller than 

 the pistillate and usually cymose, in short few-flowered bracted cymes; pistillate 

 generally solitary; calyx 4-lobed, the lobes talvate in the bud, accrescent under the 

 fruit; corolla 4-lobed, the lobes sinistrorsely contorted in the bud, more or less con- 

 tracted in the throat, the lobes spreading or recurved; stamens usually 16, inserted 

 on the bottom of the corolla in two rows and in pairs, those of the outer row rather 

 longer than and opposite those of the inner row; filaments free, slender; anthers 

 oblong, apiculate, the cells opening laterally by longitudinal slits; stamens rudi- 

 mentary or in the pistillate flower; ovary usually 4-celled, each cell more or less 

 completely divided Ijy the development of a false longitudinal partition from its 

 anterior face, rudimentary or in the staminate flower; styles 4, spreading, 2-lobed 

 at the apex; stigmas 2-parted or lobed; ovule solitary in each of the divisions of the 

 cells. Fruit globose, oblong or conical, 1-10-seeded, surrounded at the base by the 

 enlarged persistent calyx. Seeds pendulous, oblong, compressed; seed-coat thick and 

 bony, dark, more or less lustrous; embryo axile, straight or somewhat curved; cotyle- 

 dons foliaceous, ovate or lanceolate; radicle superior, cylindrical, turned toward the 

 small hilum. 



Diospyros, which is chiefly tropical, is widely distributed with about one hundred 

 and sixty species in the two hemispheres, with a few species extending beyond the 

 tropics into eastern North America, eastern Asia, southwestern Asia, and the Medi- 

 terranean region. 



Diosypros produces hard close-grained valuable wood, with dark or black heart- 



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