796 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



of the inner ranks at maturity foliaceous, obovate, acute, gradually narrowed below 

 to a sessile base, many-nerved, with dark veins, pubescent on the lower surface, and 

 sometimes 2^' long and |' wide. Park of the trunk f'-l' thick, brown tinged with 

 red, and broken on the surface into thick scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, 

 coarse-grained, very durable in contact with the soil, light brown, with thin nearly 

 white sapwood of 1 or 2 layers of annual growth; largely used for railway-ties, 

 fence-posts, and rails, and occasionally for furniture and the interior finish of 

 houses. 



Distribution. Borders of streams and ponds, and fertile often inundated bot- 

 tom-lands; valley of the Vermilion River, Illinois, through southern Illinois and 

 Indiana, western Kentucky and Tennessee, southeastern Missouri and northeastern 

 Arkansas; very abundant and probably of its largest size in southern Illinois and 

 Indiana; naturalized through cultivation in southern Arkansas, western Louisiana, 

 and eastern Texas. 



Often planted in the prairie region of the Mississippi basin as a timber-tree, and 

 as an ornament of parks and gardens in the eastern states, and now in many other 

 regions with temperate climates. 



3. CRESCENTIA, L. 



Trees, with scaly bark, and stout slightly angled branchlets. Leaves alternate, 

 short-petiolate, persistent. Flowers solitary, or in few-flowered fascicles on long 

 bibracteolate peduncles from the axils of upper leaves or from the sides of the 

 branches; calyx coriaceous, splitting in anthesis into 2 unequal broad divisions, 

 or sometimes slightly 5-lobed, deciduous; corolla inserted under the hypogynous 

 pulvinate fleshy disk, yellow streaked with purple, or dingy purple, tubular-campan- 

 ulate, more or less veutricose on the lower side by a transverse fold, abruptly dilated 

 into an oblique 2-lipped obscurely 5-lobed laciniately toothed limb; stamens 4, 

 inserted in 2 ranks on the tube of the corolla, in pairs of dijffierent lengths, introrse, 

 included or slightly exserted; filaments filiform; anthers oblong, the cells divergent; 

 staminodium solitary, posterior, often 0; ovary sessile, 1-celled, ovate-conical, gradu- 

 ally narrowed into an elongated simple exserted style 2-lobed at the apex, the lobes 

 stigmatic on their inner face; ovules in many ranks on 2 thickened 2-lobed lateral 

 parietal placentas. Fruit baccate, many-seeded, with flesh ultimately becoming hard, 

 light brown and separable into 2 layers, the inner thin and metnbranaceous, filled 

 with the united and thickened fleshy or spongy placentas attached at the base by a 

 cluster of thick fibro- vascular bundles. Seeds imbedded irregularly in the placental 

 mass, compressed, suborbicular, cordate above and below and deeply grooved on 

 the 2 faces; embryo filling the seminal cavity, flattened, and thick and fleshy, deeply 

 grooved, becoming black in drying; radicle minute, turned toward the hilum. 



Crescentia with five or six species is tropical American, and is distributed from 

 southern Florida through the Antilles to southern Mexico and to Brazil. The Cala- 

 bash-tree, Crescentia Cujete, L., a native of the West Indies, and now planted in all 

 tropical countries, is the most useful member of the genus. The hard woody shell 

 is largely used for drinking-cups, vases, and all sorts of domestic vessels; the pulp 

 is emollient and astringent, and the wood is used in cabinet-making. 



The generic name is in honor of Pietro de' Crescenzi (1233-1320), the distin- 

 guished Italian writer on agriculture. 



