786 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



The generic name commemorates the artistic and scientific labors of the German 

 botanical artist, George Dionysius Ehret (1708-1770). 



1. Ehretia elliptica, DC. Anaqua. Knacka-way, 



Leaves oval or oblong, pointed and apiculate at the apex, gradually rounded or 

 wedge-shaped at the base, entire or occasionally furnished above the middle with a 

 few broad teeth, conspicuously reticulate- venulose, unfolding late in the winter and 

 then thin, light green, lustrous, minutely tuberculate and pilose above, and covered 

 below like the branches of the inflorescence, the outer surface of the calyx, and the 

 young branchlets with ridged pale hairs, often furnished with axillary tufts of white 

 hairs, and at maturity thick and subcoriaceous, dark green and roughened above by 

 the enlarged circular crowded pale tubercles, and more or less covered with soft pale 

 or rufous pubescence below, especially on the narrow midribs and numerous primary 

 veins arcuate near the margins, irregularly deciduous during the winter; their petioles 

 stout, grooved, pubescent. Flowers opening from the autumn to early spring, in 

 compact racemose scorpioid-branched panicles 2'-3' long and broad, on short leafy 

 branches of the year, with linear acute deciduous bracts about ^' long; calyx open 

 in the bud, divided to the base into 5 linear acute divisions and nearly as long as 



the campanulate tube of the corolla, with ovate thin white lobes ^' across when 

 expanded. Fruit ripening in the autumn and in the spring, light yellow, ^' in 

 diameter, with thin sweet rather juicy edible flesh, and 2 2-seeded nutlets. 



A tree, sometimes 40-50 high, with a trunk occasionally 3 in diameter, stout 

 spreading branches forming a handsome compact round-topped head, and slender 

 branchlets without terminal buds, covered when they first appear, like the under sur- 

 face of the leaves, the branches of the inflorescence, and the outer surface of the 

 calyx of the flower, with rigid hirsute pale hairs, becoming in their first winter light 

 brown tinged with red, sometimes pubendous, often roughened by numerous pale 

 lenticels, and by small depressed obcordate leaf-scars displaying a short lunate row 

 of fibro-vascular bundle-scars; usually much smaller within the territory of the 

 United States, and often a low shrub. "Winter-buds axillary, minute, 1 or 2 together, 

 superposed, buried in the bark, and covered by 2 pairs of dark scales persistent 

 on the base of the growing branchlet and at maturity acute, dark chestnut-brown, 



