ROSACEZ. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
51 
PRUNUS SPHASROCARPA. 
CALYX-LOBES acute, with laciniate margins. Stone globose. fleas elliptical to 
oblong-ovate, entire. 
Prunus spherocarpa, Swartz, Prodr. 81; Fl. Ind. Occ. 
ii. 927. — Willdenow, Spee. ii. pt. ii. 987. — Poiret, Lam. 
Dict. v. 666. — Persoon, Syn. ii. 84.— Lunan, Hort. 
276. — Don, Gen. Syst. ii. 516. — Dietrich, 
Syn. iii. 43. — Sprengel, Syst. ii. 478; iv. pt. ii. 406.— 
Schlechtendal, Linnea, xiii. 87. — Walpers, Rep. ii. 10. — 
Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. Ind. 231.— Hooker f. Martius 
Jam. ii. 
endal, Linnea, ii. 542.— Loudon, Ard. Brit. ii. 721. — 
Bot. Mag. t. 3141.— Spach, Hist. Vég. i. 421. 
Prunus Brasiliensis, Steudel, Nom. Bot. 
Cerasus Brasiliensis, Chamisso & Schlechtendal, Linnea, 
ii. 540. 
Cerasus reflexa, Gardner, Lond. Jowr. Bot. ii. 342. 
Laurocerasus spheerocarpa, Roemer, Fam. Nat. Syn. iii. 
Fl. Brasil. xiv. pt. ii. 55, t. 19. — Sauvalle, F2. Oud. 89. 
36. — Chapman, ZV. ed. 2, Suppl. 620.—Sargent, Forest Laurocerasus sphzerocarpa, @. Brasiliensis, Roemer, 
Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 70. Fam. Nat. Syn. iii. 89. 
Cerasus spheerocarpa, Loiseleur, Nowveau Duhamel, y. Prunus pleuradenia, Grisebach, FU. Brit. W. Ind. 231. 
4, — De Candolle, Prodr. ii. 540. — Chamisso & Schlecht- 
A small glabrous tree, in Florida rarely exceeding twenty-five to thirty feet in height, with a 
trunk five or six mches in diameter covered with thin smooth or slightly reticulate-fissured light brown 
bark timged with red, and slender upright branches and branchlets. These, when they first appear, 
are orange-brown but become ashy gray or light brown tinged with red, and are covered with small 
circular pale lenticels. The leaves are elliptical to oblong-ovate, gradually or abruptly contracted into 
broad obtuse points or less commonly rounded or rarely emarginate at the apex, wedge-shaped at the 
base, entire, with slightly thickened undulate margins, eglandular, obscurely veined, with narrow mid- 
ribs deeply grooved on the upper side; they are persistent, subcoriaceous, yellow-green and lustrous on 
the upper, and paler on the lower surface, two to four and a half inches long and an inch to an inch 
and a half broad, and are borne on slender orange-brown petioles which vary from one half of an inch 
to nearly an inch in length. The stipules are foliaceous, lanceolate-acuminate, entire, a quarter of an 
inch long, and early deciduous. The flowers are produced in slender many-flowered racemes shorter 
than the leaves and ebracteolate at the flowering period, and in Florida appear in November; they are 
one eighth of an inch across and are borne on slender orange-colored pedicels which stand remotely on 
the rachis and vary from one fourth to two thirds of an inch in length. The calyx-tube is obconic, 
bright orange-colored on the outer surface, and marked by an orange band in the throat, with thin 
minute acute deciduous lobes laciniate on the margins and much shorter than the petals, which are 
obovate, rounded, or acuminate above, contracted below into short claws, and reflexed at maturity, and 
are white marked with yellow on the inner surface towards the base. The stamens are exserted, and 
have slender orange-colored subulate filaments and small yellow anthers. The ovary is ovoid and 
contracted into a short stout style crowned with a large club-shaped stigma. The fruit, which in 
Florida is produced very sparingly and ripens either in the sprig or early summer, is subglobose to 
oblong, apiculate, orange-brown, and from one third to one half of an inch long, with thin dry flesh 
adherent to the thin-walled fragile stone which is obscurely ridged on the ventral edge. The seed is 
pointed at the apex, with a thin dark orange-colored testa and thick cotyledons inclosing the short 
radicle. 
Prunus spherocarpa is found in the United States only near the shore of Bay Biscayne, where, 
west of the Miami River on rich hummock-land, it grows as a slender tree in a dense forest principally 
composed of the Mastic, the Gumbo Limbo, the Pigeon Plum, and the Florida Fig-tree, and occasionally 
