788 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



compressed smooth light brown nutlets rounded on the back and concave on the 

 inner face. Seed erect, without albumen, filling the seminal cavity; seed-coat mem- 

 branaceous, light brown; embryo siibterete, straight; cotyledons tliick and fleshy, 

 oblong, much longer than the short inferior radicle turned toward the oblong basal 

 hilum. 



Citharexylon with fifteen to twenty species is confined to tropical America, where 

 it is distributed from southern Florida through the West Indies to southern Mexico, 

 Lower California, Bolivia, and Brazil. 



The generic name, from Kiddpa and ^v\op, is a translation of the English West 

 Indian name Fiddle W^ood, a corruption of the earlier French-colonial Bois FidMe, 

 in allusion to the strength and toughness of the wood of the trees of this genus. 



1. Citharexylon villosum, Jacq. Fiddle "Wood. 



Leaves oblong-obovate to oblong, acute, acuminate, rounded, or emarginate at 

 the apex, and gradually narrowed at the base, with thickened slightly revolute 

 margins, pubescent while young on the lower surface and at maturity glabrous, con- 

 spicuously reticulate-venulose, pale green, 3'-4' long and I'-l^' wide, with broad 



pale midribs romided on the upper side and remote prominent arcuate veins; their 

 petioles stout, grooved, f ' in length, separating in falling from elevated nearly circu- 

 lar persistent woody bases. Flowers fragrant, appearing throughout the year on 

 slender pedicels in the axils of scarious pubescent bracts, in drooping axillary pubes- 

 cent racemes crowded near the ends of the branches and 2'-4' long; calyx coated 

 with pale hairs, or sometimes nearly glabrous; corolla ^' across the expanded lobes 

 of the limb, and covered on the inner surface of the tube with pale hairs. Fruit 

 subglobose to oblong-ovate, light red-brown, very lustrous, ^' in diameter, with thin 

 sweet rather juicy flesh, and inclosed nearly to the middle in the cup-like pale 

 brown slightly and irregularly lobed or sometimes nearly entire calyx; seeds ob- 

 long, narrowed at the rounded ends, about ^' long. 



A tree, in Florida rarely more than 20 high, with a trunk 4'-6' in diameter, 

 slender upright branches forming a narrow irregularly shaped head, and slender 

 slightly many-angled branchlets light yellow and covered with pale simple caducous 

 hairs when they first appear, becoming in their second year terete and ashy gray; 



