RUTACE^. SILYA OF NORTE AMERICA, 



71 



lar- 



1 



XANTHOXYLUM CRIBROSUM. 



Satinwood. 



Unarmed. Flowers in terminal clusters; sepals and petals 5, Leaves persistent. 



Xanthoxylum cribrosum, Sprengel, Syst. i. 946. — Die- X. Carib^um, Watson, Index, im (not Lamarck). — S 

 trich, Syn. ii. 1001. — Sargent, Garden and Forest, ii. 616. gent. Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 30. 



X. Floridanum, Kuttall, Sylva, iii. 14, t. 85. — Chapman, X. CaribEeum, var. Floridanum, Gray, Proc. Am. Acad. 

 Fl. 66. n. ser. xxiii. 225. 



A small round-headed tree, thirty to thirty-five feet in height, with a trunk twelve to eio-liteen 

 inches in diameter. The bark of the trunk is a quarter of an inch thick, with a smooth light gray sur- 

 face divided by shallow furrows and broken into numerous short appressed scales. The branchlets when 

 they first appear, are densely coated with thick silky pubescence ; they are stout, very brittle, puberulent 

 during their second and third years, and covered with light gray rugose bark conspicuously marked with 

 large triangular leaf-scars. The winter-buds are narrowly acuminate, half an inch long, and coated with 

 short thick pale tomentum. The leaves, which appear in Florida during the month of June, are usually 

 composed of four pairs and a terminal leaflet ; they are sometimes three-foHolate, and are rarely reduced 

 to a single leaflet. They vary usually from sik to nine inches in length, although sometimes much 

 shorter, and are borne on stout glandular petioles with enlarged bases. The leaves are densely covered 

 with tomentum when they first unfold, and retam at maturity a few scattered hairs on the petioles and 

 along the midribs of the leaflets. These are ovate-lanceolate, or elliptical and obtuse, often slightly 

 falcate, regularly contracted into a stout petiole, or sometimes distinctly oblique at the base. They are 

 nearly sessile or long-stallied, two to three inches long, an inch and a half to two inches broad, with 

 entire or slightly crenulate margins, and are coriaceous, pale yellow-green, and conspicuously marked 

 ■with large pellucid glands. The staminate and pistillate flowers are produced on separate plants, and 

 are borne in wide-spreading pubescent sessile cymes, those of the female plant being usually divided 

 at the base into three principal branches. The flowers appear in Florida in June soon after the trees 

 begin their annual growth; they are borne on slender pubescent pedicels a quarter of an inch or 

 more long, the basal bract covered with thick white tomentum. The minute acuminate calyx-lobes with 

 ciliate margins are barely an eighth of the length of the ovate greenish white petals, which are reflexed 

 when the flowers are fully expanded. The staminate flowers have five stamens with slender filaments 

 much longer than the petals, and a minute depressed rudimentary ovary. The fertile flowers show no 

 trace of stamens, and contain usually two, or sometimes a single pistil with a stipitate obovate ovary and 

 a short style with a spreading entire stigma. The fruit ripens in autumn or early winter, and may some- 

 tunes be found attached to the branches late in the spring of the following year. The ripe carpels are 

 obliquely obovate, short-stalked, one-seeded, pale chestnut-brown at maturity, a third of an inch long or 

 less, the surface faintly marked with minute glands. The seeds are black and lustrous. 



Xantlioxylum cribrosuTn now grows in Florida on the Marquesas Keys, and on South Bahia 

 Honda and Boca Chica Keys.^ It occurs in San Domingo/ Porto Rico,^ the Bahama Islands,^ and 

 Bermuda.^ 



There is reason to believe that this tree was formerly much ^ Sprengel, I. c. 



more common on the Florida keys, where it is sought for its valuable ^ p. Sintenis, Plantm Portoricensis, No. 3708, 1886, in Herb. 



wood. Dr. Blodgctt, as quoted by Nuttall {Sylva, ili. 14), spoke of Kew. 



It as a large and common tree on Key "West, from which it has now * Briee, No. 410, Eggers, No. 4497, in Herh. Kew. 



entirely disappeared. 5 Lefroy, in Herl. Kew. 



