VERBENACE^ 787 



coated with pale hairs, and sometimes ^' in length. Bark of young stems and of 

 the branches thin, light brown, and broken into thick appressed scales, becoming on 

 old trmiks sometimes V thick, deeply furrowed and divided into long thick irregular 

 plate-like scales gray or reddish brown on the surface and separating into thin flakes. 

 Wood heavy, hard, not strong, close-grained, difficult to split, light brown, with 

 thick slightly lighter colored sapwood. 



Distribution. River valleys in fertile soil, or as a shrub on dry barren ridges; 

 valley of the upper San Marcos River, western Texas, to the Rio Grande; often 

 extremely common on the bottom-lands of western Texas, and probably of its largest 

 size in the United States on the Guadalupe and Nueces rivers sixty or seventy miles 

 from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico; also through Nuevo Leon and Coahuila to 

 the mountains of San Luis Potosi. 



Often planted as a shade-tree in the streets of cities and towns of western Texas 

 and northern Mexico. 



LVIII. VERBENACEiE. 



Trees or shrubs, with opposite simple entire persistent leaves without stipules. 

 Flowers perfect ; calyx 5-tootlied or parted, persistent under the fruit ; corolla 

 4 or 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud ; stamens 4, inserted on the tube 

 of the corolla in pairs of different lengths, introrse; anthers 2-celled, the cells 

 opening longitudinally; ovary sessile on the annular disk; style simple, 2-lobed 

 and stigmatic at the apex. Fruit a fleshy drupe or a capsule. 



The Verbena family with nearly seventy genera, largely composed of her- 

 baceous plants, is widely scattered through temperate and tropical regions. 

 Some of the species are important timber-trees, the most valuable being the 

 Teak, Tectoria grandis^ L. f ., of southeastern Asia and the Malay Archipelago, 

 and some of the tropical species of Vitex. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Flowers in axillary or terminal racemes ; staminodium^ 1 ; ovary imperfectly 4-eelled; ovule 

 1 in each cell; fruit a fleshy drupe. 1. Citharexylon. 



Flowers cymose in pedunculate spikes or heads ; staminodium ; ovary 1-celled ; ovules 

 suspended from the summit of a free central placenta ; fruit a capsule ; seed naked, 

 germinating within the fruit. 2. Avicennia. 



1. CITHAREXYLON, L. 



Trees or shrubs, with coriaceous lustrous leaves, slightly angled branchlets with- 

 out terminal buds, and minute axillary buds. Flowers small, on short ebracteolate 

 pedicels, alternate or scattered on the filiform rachis of slender racemes; calyx 

 membranaceous, tubular-campanulate, truncate, minutely 5-toothed, spreading and 

 cup-shaped under the fruit; corolla salver-form, usually white, the spreading limb 

 somewhat oblique, o-lobed, the lobes broadly ovate, rounded, slightly unequal, the 2 

 posterior exterior; stamens included; filaments short, filiform, slightly thickened at 

 the base, the 2 anterior longer than the others; anthers oblong; staminodium 1, poste- 

 rior, linear, acute, rarely fertile; ovary ovate, incompletely 4-celled by the develop- 

 ment of two parietal placentas, gradually narrowed into a short included style; ovule 

 solitary in each cell, erect, attached laterally near the base, ascending, anatropous; 

 micropyle inferior. Fruit a 2-stoned 4-seeded fleshy drupe tipped with the remnants 

 of the style, with thin flesh and a thick-walled bony stone separable into 2 2-seeded 



