528 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



green and lustrous on the upper, paler on the lower surface, 2'-4y long, f -1^' wide, 

 obscurely veined, with narrow pale midribs, persistent until their second year; their 

 petioles stout, broad, orange-colored; stipules foliaceous, lanceolate-acuminate. 

 Flowers appearing from February to April, on slender club-shaped pedicels from 

 the axils of long acuminate scarious red-tipped bracts, in dense racemes shorter than 

 leaves; calyx-tube narrowly obconic, the lobes small, thin, rounded, undulate on 

 the margins, retlexed after the flowers open, deciduous; petals boat-shaped, minute, 

 cream-colored; stamens exserted, orange-colored, with glabrous filaments and large 

 pale anthers ; ovary gradually narrowed into a slender erect style enlarged above into 

 a club-shaped stigma. Fruit ripening in the autumn, remaining on the branches 

 until after the flowering period of the following year, oblong, short-pointed, black and 

 lustrous, I' long, with a thick skin, thin dry flesh, and an ovate pointed nearly cylin- 

 drical stone nearly 1' long, full and rounded at the base, with thin fragile walls, 

 obscurely ridged on the ventral and deeply grooved on the dorsal suture. 



A tree, 30-40 high, with a straight or inclining trunk sometimes 10' in diameter, 

 slender horizontal branches forming a narrow oblong or sometimes a broad head, and 

 glabrous branchlets marked by occasional pale lenticels, slightly angled, at first 



light green, becoming bright red, and in the second season light brown or gray. 

 Winter-buds acuminate, |' long, covered with narrow pointed dark chestnut- 

 brown scales rounded on the back. Bark about |' thick, gray, smooth or slightly 

 roughened by longitudinal fissures, and marked by large irregular dark blotches. 

 Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, light red-brown or sometimes rich dark 

 brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood. The partially withered leaves and young 

 branches are often fatal to animals browsing upon them, owing to the considerable 

 quantities of hydrocyanic acid which they contain. 



Distribution. Deep rich moist bottom-lands ; valley of the Cape Fear River to the 

 shores of Bay Biscayne and the valley of the Kissimee River, Florida, and through 

 southern Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana to the valley of the Guadalupe River, 

 Texas; in the Atlantic and eastern Gulf states nowhere common, and only in the im- 

 mediate neighborhood of the sea, rarely ranging inland more than fifteen or twenty 

 miles ; most abundant and of its largest size in the valleys of eastern Texas, and here 

 often forming impenetrable thickets of considerable extent. 



