598 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



Distribution. Shores of Bay Biscay ne and on many of the southern keys, Florida; 

 common on the Bahama Islands and on several of the Antilles. 



2. HIPPOMANE, L. 



A glabrous tree, with thick acrid juice, scaly bark, and stout pithy branchlets 

 marked by circular raised lenticels, and oblong or semiorbicular horizontal elevated 

 leaf-scars displaying a row of obscure fibro- vascular bundle-scars, and nearly encir- 

 cled at the nodes by ring-like scars left by the falling of the stipules. Winter-buds 

 ovate, acute, covered by many loosely imbricated long-pointed chestnut-brown scales. 

 Leaves alternate, involute in the bud, tardily deciduous, broadly ovate, abruptly 

 rounded at the apex into broad points terminating in slender mucros, rounded or 

 subcordate at the base, remotely crenulate-serrate, with minute gland-tipped teetli, 

 penniveined, long-petiolate, at first pilose, with occasional long pale hairs, soon be- 

 coming glabrous, and at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark yellow-green and lus- 

 trous above, paler and dull below, with stout light yellow midribs raised and rounded 

 on the upper side, and slender primary veins remote, arcuate, and united at some 

 distance from the margins and connected by conspicuous coarsely reticulate veinlets 

 more prominent on the upper than on the lower side; their petioles elongated, slen- 

 der, rigid, light yellow, rounded below, obscurely grooved above, marked at the 

 apex by large orbicular dark red glands; stipules ovate-lanceolate, abruptly narrowed 

 from broad bases, slightly laciniate near the apex, membranaceous, light chestnut- 

 brown, caducous. Inflorescence terminal, spicate, appearing in early spring usually 

 before the unfolding leaves, the stout fleshy rachis often bearing at the base acute 

 sterile deciduous bracts, or 1 or 2 small leaves, the minute pistillate flowers solitary in 

 their axils or in the axils of ovate acute lanceolate bracts furnished with 2 lateral 

 glandular bractlets; staminate flowers minute, articulate on slender pedicels, clus- 

 tered in 8-lo-flowered fascicles in the axils of simple bracts higher on the rachis and 

 extending to its apex; calyx usually 3-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud, that 

 of the staminate flower yellow-green, membranaceous, divided below into 3 or some- 

 times into 2 acute lobes; calyx of the pistillate flower ovate, yellow-green, divided 

 nearly to the base into 3 ovate acute concave divisions rounded on the back; stamens 

 2 or often 3, exserted, more or less connate by their filaments into a stout column, 

 free and spreading at the apex; anthers ovoid, light yellow, surmounted by the short 

 prolonged connective, attached on the back below the middle, erect, extrorse; ovary 

 6-8-celled, narrowed at the base, gradually contracted above into a short simple 

 cylindrical style separating into 6-8 long radiating flattened abruptly reflexed lobes 

 stigmatic on the inner face; ovule solitary in each cell. Fruit drupaceous, pome- 

 shaped, obscurely 6-8-lobed, raised on a thickened woody stem; skin thin, light 

 yellow-green or yellow and red ; flesh thick, lactescent, adherent to the thick-walled 

 rugose deeply winged 6-8-celled, 6-8 seeded subglobose stone flattened at the 

 ends, the cells divided throughout by thin dark radial plates, ultimately sepa- 

 rable, penetrated near the summit by oblique canals filled by the funicles of the 

 seeds. Seeds oblong-ovate, marked by a minute slightly elevated hilum and on 

 the ventral face by an obscure raphe; seed-coat membranaceous, separable into 2 

 layers, the outer dark, the inner thinner, light brown; embryo surrounded by thick 

 fleshy albumen. 



The genus is represented by a single species abounding in exceedingly poisonous 

 caustic sap which produces cutaneous eruptions and when taken internally destroys 

 the mucous membrane; formerly employed by the Caribs to poison their arrows. 



