HAMAMELIDACE^ 339 



in April and May from obtuse or acute 4-angled buds; sepals ovate, acute, lepidote 

 on the outer surface, furnished on the inner with a small ovate gland, recurved when 

 the flower is fully expanded, and about half the size of the roundish white petals 

 turning purple in fading; stamens 20-30, with purple filaments villose toward the 

 base, l^'-2' long; anthers yellow; ovary raised on a slender stipe about 1^' long. 

 Fruit 9'-12' long, terete, sometimes slightly torulose, pubescent-lepidote, the long 

 stalk appearing jointed by the enlargement of the pedicel and torus below the inser- 

 tion of the stipe; seed light brown, 11' long. 



A small slender shrubby tree, 18-20 high, with a trunk sometimes o'-6' in 

 diameter, and thin angled branchlets dark gray, smooth or slightly rugose, and cov- 

 ered with minute ferrugineous scales. Bark rarely more than ^' thick, slightly 

 fissured, the dark red-brown surface broken into small irregularly shaped divisions. 

 Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, yellow faintly tinged with red, with lighter 

 colored sapwood of about 15 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Florida coast from Cape Canaveral to the southern keys; generally 

 distributed, but nowhere abundant; common on several of the Antilles. 



XIX. HAMAMELIDACEiE. 



Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, slender terete branchlets, naked or scaly 

 buds, and fibrous roots. Leaves alternate, petiolate, stipulate, deciduous. 

 Flowers perfect or unisexual ; calyx 4-parted or ; j^etals 4 or ; stamens 

 4-8 ; anthers attached at the base, introrse, 2-celled ; ovary inserted in the 

 bottom of the receptacle, 2-celled ; ovules 1 or many, anatropous, suspended 

 from an axile placenta ; micropyle superior ; raphe ventral. Fruit a woody 

 capsule opening at the summit. Seed usually 1 ; embryo surrounded by fleshy 

 albumen ; cotyledons oblong, flat, longer than the terete radicle turned toward 

 the hilum. The Witch Hazel family with eighteen genera is confined to eastern 

 North America, southwestern, southern, and eastern Asia, the Malay Archi- 

 pelago, Madagascar, and South Africa. Of the three North American genera 

 two are arborescent. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT GENERA. 



Flowers usually unisexual, capitate, without petals, the pistillate without sepals ; capsules 

 consolidated by their bases into a globose head ; seed with a terminal wing- ; leaves pal- 

 mately lobed. 1. Liquidambar. 



Flowers usually perfect, with calyx and corolla ; carpels not consolidated into a head ; seed 

 without a wing-. 2. Hamamelis. 



1. LIQUIDAMBAR, L. 



Trees, with balsamic juices, scaly bark, terete often winged branchlets, scaly buds, 

 and fibrous roots. Leaves plicate in the bud, alternate, palmately lobed, glandular- 

 serrate, long-petiolate ; stipules lanceolate, acute, caducous. Flowers monoecious or 

 rarely perfect in capitate heads surrounded by involucres of 4 deciduous bracts, the 

 staminate in terminal racemes, the pistillate in solitary long-stalked heads from 

 the axils of upper leaves; staminate flowers without a calyx and corolla; stamens 

 indefinite, interspersed with minute scales; filaments filiform, shorter than the oblong 

 obcordate anthers opening longitudinally; pistillate flowers surrounded by long- 

 awned scales, the whole confluent into globular heads; calyx obconic, its limb short 



