EBENACE^ 



751 



dark green and lustrous, glabrous or puberulous on the upper, paler and pubescent 

 on the lower surface, -f'-l^' long and about 1' wide, with broad midribs and about 4 

 pairs of arcuate primary veins and reticulate veinlets, unfolding in February and 

 March, and falling during the following winter without change of color; their peti- 

 oles short, thick, and hairy. Flowers appearing in early spring when the leaves are 



about one third grown, on branches of the previous year; staminate on slender droop- 

 ing pedicels furnished near the middle with minute caducous bractlets, in 1-3-flow- 

 ered crowded pubescent fascicles; pistillate on stouter club-shaped bibracteolate pe- 

 duncles, solitary or rarely in pairs; calyx of the staminate flower ^' long and deeply 

 divided into 5 ovate or lanceolate silky-tomentose lobes recurved after the opening 

 of the flower, and much shorter than the corolla ^' long, creamy white, and slightly 

 contracted below the 5 short spreading rounded lobes ciliate on the margins; sta- 

 mens, with glabrous filaments shorter than the corolla, and linear-lanceolate anthers 

 opening at the apex only by short slits; pistillate flowers without rudimentary sta- 

 mens, Y long, with oblong acute silky tomentose calyx-lobes half the length of the 

 pubescent corolla nearly ^' across the short spreading lobes; ovary ovate, pubescent 

 like the young fruit, ultimately 8-celled. Fruit ripening in August, subglobose, ^'-1' 

 in diameter, and 3-8 seeded, surrounded at the base by the large tliickened leathery 

 calyx sometimes 1' in diameter, with oblong pubescent reflexed lobes, the thick 

 tough black skin inclosing the thin sweet insipid juicy dark flesh; seeds triangular, 

 rounded on the back, narrowed and flattened at the pointed apex, |' long, about 

 Y thick, with a bony lustrous light red pitted coat. 



An intricately branched tree, occasionally 40-50 high, with a trunk 18-20 in 

 diameter, dividing at some distance above the ground into a number of stout upright 

 branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and slender terete slightly zigzag 

 branchlets, coated at first with pale or rufous tomentum, ashy gray, glabrous or 

 puberulous during their first winter, later becoming brown and marked by minute 

 pale lenticels and by small elevated seraiorbicular leaf-scars displaying a lunate row of 

 fibro-vascular bundle-scars; often much smaller, and toward the northern and west- 

 ern limits of its range a low many-stemmed shrub. Winter-buds axillary, obtuse, 

 barely more than Jg' long, with broadly ovate scales rounded at the back and coated 

 with rufous tomentum. Bark of the trunk smooth, light gray slightly tinged with 

 red, the outer layer falling away in large irregularly shaped patches displaying the 



