CYRILLACES. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 5 
CLIFTONIA. 
FLowErs regular, perfect ; calyx 5 to 8-lobed, the lobes imbricated in estivation ; 
petals 5 to 8, hypogynous, imbricated; stamens 10, hypogynous; ovary 2 to 4-celled ; 
ovules solitary. Fruit capsular, indehiscent, 2 to 4-winged, 2 to 4-seeded. 
Cliftonia, Gertner f. Fruct. iii. 246, t. 225. — Endlicher, 
Gen. 1413. — Meisner, Gen. 247. — Torrey & Gray, FU. 
N. Am. i. 256.— Planchon, Lond. Jour. Bot. v. 254. — 
Baillon, Adansonia, i. 202, t. 4, f. 3-6; Dict. ii. 97. — 
Bentham & Hooker, Gen. ii. 1226. 
Mylocaryum, Willdenow, Hnwm. 454. 
A glabrous tree or shrub, with thick dark brown scaly bark, slender terete branchlets marked with 
conspicuous leaf-scars, and small acuminate buds covered with chestnut-brown scales. Leaves alternate, 
entire, coriaceous, oblong-lanceolate, rounded or slightly emarginate at the apex, glandular-punctate, 
short-petioled, destitute of stipules, persistent. 
der, bibracteolate above the middle, produced from the axils of large acuminate membranaceous alternate 
Flowers in short terminal erect racemes. Pedicels slen- 
bracts deciduous before the opening of the flower. Calyx-lobes equal or unequal, broadly ovate, rounded 
or acuminate at the apex, persistent, much shorter than the obovate unguiculate concave white or rose- 
colored deciduous petals. Stamens opposite the sepals and alternate with them, inserted with and shorter 
than the petals, two-ranked, those of the outer rank longer than those of the inner rank; filaments 
laterally enlarged near the middle, flattened below, subulate above; anthers attached below the middle, 
itrorse, two-celled, the cells laterally dehiscent. Disk cup-shaped, surrounding the base of the oblong 
two to four-winged and two to four-celled ovary. Stigma subsessile, obscurely two to four-lobed ; ovules 
suspended from the apex of the cells, anatropous; raphe dorsal; micropyle superior. Fruit oblong, 
crowned with the remnants of the persistent style, three or rarely four-celled, two to four-seeded ; peri- 
carp spongy, the wings thin and membranaceous. Seeds suspended, fusiform; testa thin. Embryo 
thin, surrounded by the fleshy albumen ; cotyledons very short; the radicle superior. 
The wood of Cliftonia is heavy, close-grained, and moderately hard, although brittle and not 
strong ; it contains numerous thin medullary rays, and is brown tinged with red, with a thick lighter 
fom, 
colored sapwood composed of forty or fifty layers of annual growth. The specific gravity of the abso- 
lutely dry wood is 0.6249, a cubic foot weighing 38.95 pounds. It burns with a clear bright flame, and 
is valued as fuel. 
William Bartram’ is the first botanist who noticed Cliftonia. 
of 1773 in the coast region of Georgia, near the Savannah River.’ 
He found it during the spring 
It was mistaken by Lamarck for a 
species of Ptelea, and later was dedicated by Sir Joseph Banks to the memory of Dr. Francis Clifton,’ 
an English physician of the last century. The genus is represented by a single species. 
1 See i. 16. 
2 Trav. 6, 30. 
8 Francis Clifton (d. 1736) ; the son of Joseph Clifton, a mer- 
chant of Great Yarmouth. Clifton entered the medical school at 
Leyden in 1724, graduated with honor the same year, and at once 
established himself in London as a physician. A friendship with 
Sir Hans Sloane and other men of science opened for Clifton the 
doors of the Royal Society, to which he was elected in 1727. He 
received an honorary degree of M. D. from the University of Cam- 
bridge, and was appointed physician to the Prince of Wales. Clif- 
ton left England suddenly in 1734 for Jamaica, where he died two 
years later. He was the author of several papers on medical sub- 
jects ; and at the time of his death was engaged in writing an ac- 
(See Leslie Stephen, 
count of the diseases prevalent in Jamaica. 
Dict. National Biography, xi. 86.) 
