ILICINEiE. 



SILVA OF NORTH A3IERICA. 



113 



ILEX DECIDUA, 



Parts of the flower usually in 4's ; calyx-lobes broadly triangular. Leaves oblong- 

 spatulate, or lanccolatc-obovate. 



Ilex decidua, Walter, Fl. Car, 241. — Poiret, Lam. Diet. 

 Suppl. iii. Q^- — Chapman, Fl. 269. — Curtis, Eep. Geolog. 

 Surv. N. Car. 1860, iii. 59. — Koch, Dendr. ii. 227. — 

 Maximowicz, Mem. Acad. St. Petershourg, ser. 7, sxix. 

 30, — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. lOiA Census U. 8. 

 ix. 37. — Trelease, Trans. St. Louis Acad. v. 346, — Wat- 

 son & Coalter, Grai/s Man. ed. 6, 108. 



I. prinoides, Alton, Ilort, Kew. i. 169. — Lamarck, HI. i. 

 355. — Willdenow, Spec. i. 709, — Nouveau. Duliamel, i. 

 11. — Michaux, Fl. Bor.-Am. ii. 229. — Persoon, 5;/n. i. 



151. — Desfoutaines, Hist. Arh. ii. 362. — Pursh,^?;. ^m. 

 Sept. i. 118. — Nuttall, Gen. i. 109. — Roemer & Schultes, 

 Sijst. iii. 488 ; Mant. iii. 332. — Watson, Dendr. Brit. i. 

 115, t. 115. — Sprengel, Syst i. 495. — Audubon, Birds, 



t. 89. 

 I. Eestivalis, Lamarck, Diet. iii. 147 ; III. i. 356. 

 I. Prionitis, Willdenow, Enum. Suppl. 8. 

 Prinos deciduus, De CandoUe, Prodr. ii. 16. — Don, Gen. 



Syst. ii. 20. — Loudon, Arb. Brit. ii. 520. 

 I. ambiguus, Elliott, Sk. ii. 705. 



A small ramiUose tree, twenty to thirty feet in height, with a slender trunk six to ten inches in 

 diameter, stout spreading branches, and thin fibrous roots j or more ofteuj a tall straggling shrub. The 

 bark of the trunk is rarely more than one sixteenth of an inch thick, with a light brown surface rough- 

 ened with wart-like excrescences. The branches are terete and covered with glabrous pale silver-gray 

 bark. The winter-buds are minute and obtuse, with ovate light gray scales. The leaves are deciduous, 

 and, except on vigorous shoots, are fascicled on the ends of short spur-hke lateral branches, which in 

 winter are conspicuously marked by the scars left by the falling of the petioles. They are oblong- 

 spatulate or spatulate-lanceolate, acuminate, obtuse or emarginate at the apex, gradually contracted 

 into slender grooved pubescent petioles^ aind remotely crenulate-serrate, the lower teeth tipped with 

 minute glands. They are two to three inches long, and a third of an inch to nearly an inch in breadth, 

 membranaceous, becoming thick and firm at maturity, pale on the lower surface, with a few scattered 

 hairs along the narrow midrib, light green and grooved along the midrib above. The stipules are 

 filiform, membranaceous and deciduous. The flowers are produced in one or two-flowered glabrous 

 cymes aggregated at the ends of the lateral branches of the previous season, or rarely solitary on the 

 shoots of the year ; they appear with the leaves, the sterile flowers on slender pedicels half an inch long 

 and longer than those of the fertile flowers. The calyx-lobes are triangular, the acute apex often dark 

 colored, the margins smooth or sometimes slightly cihate. The fruit is globose or depressed-globose, 

 orange or orange-scarlet, and a quarter of an inch across ; it Is borne on short stout stems, and ripens in 

 the early autumn, often remaining on the branches until the appearance of the leaves in the following 



The nutlets are many-ribbed on the back. 



laex decidua grows from southern Virginia to western Florida In the high country which hes 

 between the eastern base of the Appalachian Mountains and the immediate neighborhood of the coast. 

 It occurs in southern Illinois, and extends southward to the Gulf of Mexico and through southwestern 

 Missouri, Arkansas, and eastern Texas to the valley of the Colorado River. 



Ilex decidua' inhabits the borders of streams and swamps in low wet soil. It is usually a strag- 

 ghng shrub in the states east of the Mississippi River, and only hi some parts of Missouri and m south- 

 ern Arkansas and eastern Texas does it assume the habit of a tree. , t i . 



The wood of Ilex decidua is heavy, hard, and close-grained. It is creamy white with rather lighter 



^ This plant is not sufficient., comznon or sufficiently well known, apparently, in any part of the country, to have acquired familiar 

 popular names. 



sprmn- 



