324 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



Distribution. Low rich soil near the streams of the coast region from southern 

 Georgia through western Florida to southern Alabama. 



Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental tree in western Europe. 



2. LIRIODENDRON, L. 



Trees, with deeply furrowed brown bitter bark and slender branchlets marked by 

 elevated leaf-scai:s and narrow stipular rings, and compressed obtuse winter-buds, 

 their scales membranaceous stipules joined at the edges, accrescent, strap-shaped, 

 often slightly falcate, oblique at the unequal base, tardily deciduous after the unfold- 

 ing of the leaf. Leaves recurved in the bud by the bending down of the petiole near 

 the middle, bringing the apex of the blade to the base of the bud, sinuately 4-lobed, 

 heart-shaped, truncate or slightly wedge-shaped at the base, truncate at the apex by 

 a broad shallow sinus and minutely apiculate. Flowers appearing after the unfold- 

 ing of the leaves, cup-shaped, conspicuous, inclosed in the bud in a 2-valved stipu- 

 lar membranaceous caducous spathe; sepals spreading or reflexed, ovate-lanceolate, 

 concave, greenish white, early deciduous; petals erect, rounded at the base, early 

 deciduous; filaments filiform, half as long as the linear 2-celled extrorse anthers 

 adnate to the outer face of the connective terminating in a short fleshy point; pistils 

 imbricated on the elongated sessile receptacle into a spindle-shaped column; ovary 

 inserted by a broad base; style narrowly acuminate, laterally flattened, appressed; 

 stigmas short, recurved at the summit; ovules 2, suspended from near the middle 

 of the ventral suture. Fruit a narrow light brown cone formed of the closely im- 

 bricated dry and woody indehiscent carpels consisting of a laterally compressed 

 4-ribbed pericarp, the lateral ribs confluent into the margins of the large wing-like 

 lanceolate compressed style marked vertically by a thin sutural line, the carpels 

 deciduous when ripe in the autumn from the slender elongated axis of the fruit 

 persistent on the branch during the winter. Seeds suspended, 2 or single by abor- 

 tion; testa thin, coriaceous, and marked b}'^ a narrow prominent raphe; embryo mi- 

 nute at the base of the fleshy albumen, its radicle next the hilum. 



Liriodendron, widely distributed in North America and Europe during the crusta- 

 ceous period, is now represented by two species, one in eastern North America, the 

 other in central China. 



Liriodendron, from Xipiov and SevSpov, is descriptive of the lily-like flower. 



