MELIACE^ 



693 



Distribution. Florida from Cape Canaveral to the southern keys, and on the 

 west coast on the Caloosa River and the shores of Caximbas Bay; one of the largest 

 and most common of the south Florida trees, and the only one which sheds its foli- 

 age during the autumn and winter; on most of the West Indian islands, in tropical 

 Mexico, Guatemala, New Granada, and Venezuela. 



XXVII. MBLIACE-ai. 



Trees or shrubs, with hard wood and dotless alternate pinnate leaves with- 

 out stipules. Flowers in panicles, perfect, regular ; calyx 5-lobed, the lobes 

 contorted (in Swietenia) in the bud, persistent ; petals 5, convolute in the bud ; 

 stamens inserted at the base of the disk ; filaments united into a tube ; an- 

 thers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally ; ovary 3-5-celled, free, 

 surrounded at the base by an annular or cup-shaped disk; styles united, 

 dilated into a 5-lobed stigma ; ovules numerous in each cell, suspended, semi- 

 anatropous ; raphe ventral ; micropyle superior. Fruit a capsule (Swietenia) 

 or drupe. Seeds often winged ; embryo with leafy cotyledons. 



A family with about forty genera chiefly confined to the tropics, with a single 

 representative, Swietenia, in southern Florida. Melia Azedarach, L., of this 

 family, the China-tree or Pride of India, with drupaceous fruits, has long been 

 cultivated in the southern states, where it now often grows spontaneously. 



1. SWIETENIA, Jacq. 



Trees, with heavy dark red wood. Leaves abruptly pinnate, glabrous, long-petio- 

 late, persistent; leaflets opposite, petiolate, usually oblique at the base. Flowers 

 perfect, small, in axillary or subterminal panicles produced near the ends of the 

 branches; calyx minute; petals spreading; staminal tube urn-shaped, connate with 

 the petals, 10-lobed, the lobes convolute in the bud; anthers 10, fixed by the back 

 below the sinuses of the staminal tube, included; ovary ovoid, 5-celled, the cells 

 opposite the petals; style erect, longer than the tube of the stamens; stigma discoid, 

 5-rayed. Fruit a 5-celled o-valved capsule septicidally dehiscent from the base, the 

 valves separating from a persistent 5-angled axis thickened toward the apex and 

 5-winged toward the base. Seeds suspended from near the summit of the axis, 

 imbricated in 2 ranks, compressed, emarginate, produced above into a long mem- 

 branaceous wing with the hilum at its apex and transversed by the raphe; embryo 

 transverse; cotyledons conferruminate with each other and with the thin fleshy 

 albumen; radicle short, papillseform. 



Swietenia with three species is confined to tropical America and west tropical 

 Africa, with one species reaching the shores of southern Florida. 



The generic name is in honor of Baron von Swieten (1700-1772), the distinguished 

 Dutch physician, founder of the Botanic Garden and of the Medical School at 

 Vienna. 



1. S-wietenia Mahagoni, Jacq. Mahogany. 



Leaves 4'-6' long, with slender glabrous petioles thickened at the base and 3 or 

 4 pairs of ovate lanceolate leaflets rounded at the base on the upper side, narrowly 

 wedge-shaped or nearly straight on t^ lower side, entire, coriaceous, pale yellow- 

 green or slightly rufous on the under surface, 3'-4' long, I'-l^ wide, with promi- 

 nent reddish brown midribs, conspicuous reticulate veins, and stout grooved petio- 

 lules \' long. Flowers appearing in July and August on slender puberulous pedicels, 



