780 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



they unfold coated beneath with pale tomentum, and at maturity thick and coria- 

 ceous, ghibrous, bright green, lustrous above, obscurely reticulate-venulose, 4'-o' 

 long and ^'-2' wide, with broad pale midribs and remote forked primary veins 

 arcuate near the margins, persistent until their second year; their petioles stout, 

 V-|' long. Flowers opening in March from pilose iiiHorescence-buds formed the 

 previous autumn in the axils of the leaves of the year, the staminate, pistillate, and 

 perfect flowers on different individuals in 3-flowered clusters, sessile or short-pedicel- 

 late, in pedunculate cymes or short racemes, with scale-like nearly triangular acute 

 persistent bracts; calyx puberulous, with acute rigid lobes, and much shorter than 

 the creamy white corolla ^' long when expanded, with an elongated tube and short 

 spreading ovate rounded lobes; stamens inserted on the middle of the tube of the 

 corolla, included or slightly exserted, small and often rudimentary in the pistillate 

 flower; ovary abruptly contracted into a stout columnar style crowned with a large 

 exserted capitate stigma, reduced in the staminate flower to a minute point. Fruit 

 ripening early in the autumn, oblong or obovate, 1' long, dark blue, with thin flesh 



and a thick or sometimes thin- walled brittle ovate pointed stone; seed ovate, cov- 

 ered with a chestnut-brown coat marked by broad conspicuous pale veins radiating 

 from the short broad ventral hilum and encircling the seed. 



A tree, occasionally 40-50 high, with a trunk sometimes a foot in diameter, and 

 slender slightly angled ultimately terete branch! ets light or red-brown and marked 

 by minute pale lenticels, becoming ashy gray in their second year and roughened by 

 the small elevated orbicular leaf-scars displaying a ring of minute fibro-vascular 

 bundle-scars; usually much smaller and often shrubby. "Winter-buds linear-lance- 

 olate, ^' long, with 2 thick lanceolate reddish brown puberulous scales. Bark of 

 the trunk thin, dark gray or gray tinged with red, and roughened by small thin 

 appressed scales displaying in falling the dark cinnamon red inner bark. Wood 

 heavy, very hard and strong, close-grained, difficult to work, dark brown, with thick 

 light brown or yellow sapwood. 



Distribution. Usually in moist soil near the borders of streams and Pine-barren 

 ponds and swamps, and occasionally on dry sandy uplands; coast region of the south 

 Atlantic and Gulf states, from the valley of the Cape Fear River, North Carolina, 

 to the shores of the Kissimmee River and Tampa Bay, Florida, and to eastern 

 Louisiana. 



