SIMARUBACE^ 



589 



lanceolate or rhombic-lanceolate, entire or remotely crenulate, coriaceous, lustrous, 

 dark yellow-green, conspicuously reticulate-veined, covered below with minute gland- 

 ular dots, 1'--^' long, with slender petiolules, that of the terminal leaflet often 1' or 

 more long and twice as long as those of the lateral leaflets. Flowers in terminal 

 pedunculate or nearly sessile panicles appearing in Florida from August to Decem- 

 ber. Fruit ripening in the spring, ovoid, often nearly ^' long, black covered with a 

 glaucous bloom, with thin flesh filled with an aromatic oil and of rather agreeable 

 flavor. 



A slender tree, 40-50 high, with a trunk sometimes, although rarely, a foot in 

 diameter, and slender terete branchlets covered with wart-like excrescences, at first 



light brown, becoming gray during their second season. Bark of the trunk thin, 

 gray-brown, slightly furrowed and broken into short appressed scales. Winter- 

 buds acute, flattened, ^ long, with broadly ovate scales slightly keeled on the back. 

 "Wood heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, very resinous, extremely dur- 

 able, light orange color, with thin rather lighter colored sapwood of 12-15 layers 

 of annual growth; often used as fuel. ^ 



Distribution. Southern Florida from Mosquito Inlet to the southern keys; com- 

 mon in the immediate neighborhood of the coast to the rich hummocks of the inte- 

 rior, and of its largest size on Umbrella Key; on the Bahama Islands and on many 

 of the Antilles. 



XXV. SIMARUBACE-ai. 



Trees or shrubs, with bitter juice. Leaves alternate, pinnate, persistent, 

 without stipules. Flowers regular, dioecious ; calyx 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated 

 in the bud; petals 5, imbricated in the bud, hypogynous; stamens 10, inserted 

 under the disk ; pistil of 5 united carpels ; ovary 5-celled ; ovule solitary in each 

 cell, anatropous ; raphe ventral ; micropyle superior. Fruit a drupe. 



Of the twenty-eight genera of this family, confined chiefly to the tropics 

 and to the warmer parts of the northern hemisphere, only Simaruba has an 

 arborescent representative in the flora of North America. Ailanthus gland- 

 ulosa, Desf., the so-called Tree of Heaven, a native of northern China, has 

 been largely planted as an ornament and shade tree in the eastern United 

 States, and is now sparingly naturalized southward. 



