334 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



orbicular leaf-scars, displaying a single central fibro-vascular bundle-scar. Bark 

 about ^' thick, dark reddish brown, and roughened on the otherwise smooth surface 

 by numerous small excrescences. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, rich dark 

 brown, with thick bright yellow sapwood of 20-30 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Shores and islands of Florida south of Cape Canaveral on the east 

 coast and of Cape lioniano on the west coast; comparatively common except on some 

 of the western keys, and most abundant and of its largest size on the rich wooded 

 hummocks adjacent to Bay Biscayne; also in the Bahamas. 



3. UMBELLULARIA, Nutt. 



A pungent aromatic tree, with dark brown scaly bark, slender terete branchlets 

 marked in their second and third years by small semicircular or nearly triangular 

 elevated leaf-scars displaying a horizontal row of minute fibro-vascular bundle-scars, 

 naked buds, and thick fleshy brown roots. Leaves alternate, involute in the bud, 

 lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, acute or rounded at the narrow apex, cuneate or some- 

 what rounded at the base, entire, with thickened slightly revolute margins, petiolate, 

 coated when they appear on the lower surface with pale soft pubescence and puber- 

 ulous on the upper surface, at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark green and lus- 

 trous above, dull and paler below, with slender light yellow midribs, and remote, 

 obscure, arcuate veins more or less united near the margins, and connected by 

 conspicuous reticulate veinlets. Flowers in axillary stalked many-flowered umbels, 

 inclosed in the bud by an involucre of 5 or 6 imbricated broadly ovate or obovate 

 pointed concave yellow caducous scales, the latest umbels subsessile at the base of 

 terminal leaf-buds; pedicels slender, puberulous, without bractlets, from the axils 

 of obovate membranaceous puberulous deciduous bracts decreasing in size from 

 the outer to the inner; calyx divided almost to the base into 6 nearly equal broadly 

 obovate rounded pale yellow lobes spreading and reflexed after anthesis; stamens 

 inserted on the short slightly thickened tube of the calyx; filaments flat, glabrous, 

 pale yellow, rather shorter than the anthers, those of the third series furnished 

 near the base with 2 conspicuous stipitate orange-colored orbicular flattened glands; 

 anthers oblong, flattened, light yellow, those of the first and second series introrse, 

 those of the second and third series extrorse ; stamens of the fourth series reduced to 

 minute ovate acute yellow staminodia; ovary sessile, ovate, often more or less gib- 

 bous, glabrous, abruptly contracted into a stout columnar style rather shorter than 

 the lobes of the calyx and crowned by a simple capitate discoid stigma. Fruit ovate, 

 surrounded at the base by the enlarged and thickened truncate or lobed tube of the 

 calyx, yellow-green sometimes more or less tinged with purple; pericarp thin and 

 fleshy. Seed ovate, light brown; testa separable into 2 coats, the outer thick, hard, 

 and woody, the inner thin and papery, closely investing the embryo, chestnut-brown, 

 and lustrous on the inner surface. 



Umbellularia consists of a single species. 



The generic name, a diminutive of Umbella, relates to the character of the inflo- 

 rescence. 



1. Umbellularia Californica, Nutt. California Laurel. Spice-tree. 



Leaves 2'-5' long, ^-1^' wide, unfolding in winter or early in the spring and 

 continuing to appear as the branches lengthen until late in the autumn, beginning to 

 fade during the summer, turning to a beautiful yellow or orange color and falling one 



