RUBIACE^ 



801 



veinlets, unfolding in the autumn and in early spring and summer, and persistent 

 for 1 or 2 years; their petioles slender, orange-colored, ^' |' ^^ng; stipules nearly 

 triangular, apiculate, with entire dentate or ciliate margins, about ^q' long, and in 

 falling marking the branchlets with ring-like scars. Flowers appearing from 

 March until June, about 3' long, on l-flowered peduncles; calyx-tube ovate; corolla 

 glabrous; filaments united into a short tube. Fruit |' long, becoming black in 

 drying; seeds oblong, ^' long, with a dark brown papillose coat and a light brown 

 wing. 



A glabrous tree, in Florida sometimes 20-25 high, with a trunk 10'-12' in diam- 

 eter, slender erect branches forming a narrow head, and terete branchlets dark green 



at first, soon becoming dark red-brown and covered with pale lenticels, and in their 

 second year ashy gray and conspicuously marked by the elevated leaf-scars. Bark 

 of the trunk about i' thick, and divided by deep fissures into square smooth pale or 

 nearly white plates. Wood very heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, 

 light brown handsomely streaked with different shades of yellow and brown, with 

 bright yellow sapwood of 12-20 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Keys of southern Florida; abundant on Key West and Upper 

 Metacombe Keys; also on many of the Antilles, in southern Mexico, and on the west 

 coast of Nicaragua. 



3. CEPHALANTHUS, L. 



Small trees or shrubs, with opposite or verticillate petiolate leaves, interpetiolar 

 stipules, and scaly buds. Flowers nectariferous, yellow or creamy white, sessile in 

 the axils of glandular bracts, in dense globose pedunculate terminal or axillary soli- 

 tary or panicled heads; receptacle globose, setose; calyx-tube obpyramidal, with a 

 short limb unequally 4 or 5-toothed or lobed; corolla tubular funnel-form, divided 

 into 4 or 5 short spreading or reflexed lobes usually furnished with a minute dark 

 gland at the base or on the side of each sinus, puberulous on the inner surface of the 

 tube, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens inserted on the throat of the corolla; 

 filaments short; anthers linear-oblong, sagittate, apiculate at the base; pistil of 2 

 carpels; ovary 2-celled; style filiform, elongated; stigma clavate, entire; ovule soli- 

 tary in each cell, suspended from the apex of the cell on a short papillose funicle. 

 Fruit obpyramidal, coriaceous, 2-coccous. Seeds oblong, pendulous, covered at the 



