ANONACEiE. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



29 



ANONA GLABRA. 



Pond Apple. 



Glabrous throughout, peduncles sohtary, opposite the leaves. Petals 6. Fruit 

 smooth, faintly marked Avith pentagonal areoles. 



r 



A. glabra, Linnreus, Speo. 537. — Marshall, Arhust. Am. A. laurifolia, Dunal, Mo^i. Anoji. G5.~T>e CandoWe, Stjst. 



10. — Lamarck, iJiei. ii. 125, cxc. syn. — Dii Roi, .ff«?-&A. i. 468 j Frodr. I 84. — Dietrich, S^}i. iii. 304. — Grise- 



Bauni. I 62, — Wiildenow, Sj^ec. ii. 1267. — Dimal, Mou. bach, FL Brit. W. Ind. 4. — Chapman, Fl. ed. 2, Suppl. 



Ano?i. 74. — De Candolle, Sijst. i. 475 ; Prodr. I. 85.— 603. — Cooper, Smithsonian Rep. 1860, 439. — Sargent, 



Dietrich, Syn. iii. 306.— Chapman, Bat. Gazette, iii. 2.— Forest Trees N. Am. lO^A Census V. S. ix. 23. 



Sargent, GardeR and Forest, ii. 616. Porcelia parviflora, Audubon, Birds, t. 162 (not Persoon). 



A low tree, thirty to forty feet high, with a short trunk often eighteen inches in diameter ahove 

 the swell of the thickened tapering base, which is sometimes strengthened by spreading buttresses, and 

 with stout wide-spreading often contorted branches. The bark of tlie trunk is an eighth of an inch 

 thickj dark red-brown, divided by broad shallow anastomosing fissures, the surface separating into 

 numerous small scales. The bark of the branches is brown or yellow during their first season, turning- 

 brown during the second, Avhen the surface is broken by numerous depressions, and marked by small 

 scattered wart-like excrescences. The persistent leaves are bright green on the upper, and palor on the 

 lower surface, coriaceous, oval or oblong, acute, tapering or rounded at the base, with a prominent 

 midrib and stout petiole half an inch long. They are three to five inches long and one and a half to 

 two inches broad, and in Florida appear in March and April. The nodding flowers, borne on short 

 stout peduncles thickened at the two extremities and bearing at their base a pair of minute acute mem- 

 branaceous deciduous bracts, open in April from an ovoid three-angled bud. The calyx is three-lobed, 

 with broadly ovate acute divisions. The petals are valvate in estivation, connivent, acute, concave, pale 

 yellow or dirty white ; those of the outer row are marked on the inner surface near the base with a 

 bright red spot ; those of the inner row are narrower and somewhat shorter. The fruit ripens in 

 November. It is broadly ovate, truncate or depressed at the base, rounded at the other end, three to 

 five inches long and two to three and a half inches broad. The color of the thick leathery skin is 

 fight green when the fruit is fully grown, turning yellow as It becomes fully ripe, when it is often 

 marked by numerous dark brown blotches. The flesh surrounding the thick elongated fibrous torus is 

 light green, slightly aromatic, insipid, edible but of no comestible value. The seeds, inclosed in a thin 

 aril, are half an inch long, shghtly obovate, turgid, rounded at the extremities, the margins contracted 

 into a narrow wing formed by the thickening of the outer coat. 



Anona glabra is found in Florida from Cape Malabar on the east coast to the shores of Bay 

 Biscayne, and on the west coast from Pease Creek to the Caloosa River.' It occurs on the Bahama 

 Islands, on San Domingo, and on St. Thomas and St. Croix.^ 



Anona glabra grows in Florida in shallow fresh-water ponds, on swampy hummocks, or by the 

 borders of small fresh-water streams flowing from the Everglades. It reaches its largest size on the 

 shores of Bay Biscayne near the Miami River, where it is found surrounded and oversliadowed by 



1 A number of trees of Anona glabra are growing in a small pond was early and constant communication between New Providence 



within the present limits of the citj of Key West. This tree is not and Key West. 



found, however, elsewhere on the island, or on any of the neighbor- ^ I have not seen West Indian spechnens ; and these stations are 



ing keys ; and as it was not noticed by Dr. Blodgett, who explored given on the authority of Dunal (I. c.) and of Eggers. (FL St. 



the Key West flora fifty years ago, it was perhaps introduced here Croix and the Virgin Islands, Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. No. 13, 



from the mainland, or more probably from the Bahamas, as there 23.) 



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