RHAMNACES. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 49 
COLUBRINA RECLINATA. 
Naked Wood. 
INFLORESCENCE pedunculate. Fruit dry; nutlets crustaceous, 2-valved at the 
apex ; cotyledons flat and fleshy. Leaves persistent, glabrate at maturity. 
Colubrina reclinata, Brongniart, Ann. Sci. Nat. x. 364.— Ceanothus reclinatus, L’Héritier, Sert. Ang. 4. — De Can- 
Don, Gen. Syst. ii. 836. — Richard, Fl. Cub. ii. 147.— dolle, Prodr. ii. 31. — Macfadyen, Fl. Jam. 211. 
Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. Ind. 101; Cat. Pi. Cub. 34. BRhamnus elliptica, Swartz, Prodr. 50; Fl. Ind. Oce. i. 
Eggers, Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. No. 18, 40.— Sargent, 497. — Aiton, Hort. Kew. i. 265. — Willdenow, Spec. i. 
Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 41. — Tre- 1098. — Roemer & Schultes, Syst. v. 288. 
lease, Trans. St. Louis Acad. v. 368. Zizyphus Domingensis, Nouveau Duhamel, iii. 56. 
Diplisca elliptica, Rafinesque, Sylva Tellur. 31. 
A tree, growing in Florida to the height of fifty or sixty feet, with a stout trunk three or four feet 
in diameter, divided, when fully grown, by many irregular deep furrows multiplying and spreading in all 
directions. The bark is thin and orange-brown, exfoliating with large papery scales... The branchlets 
when they first appear are slightly angled, puberulent, and reddish brown, but soon become glabrate, and 
in the second season are nearly terete, with gray or light brown bark marked with numerous small light- 
colored lenticels. The leaves are elliptical, ovate or lanceolate, usually contracted at the apex into a 
blunt point, entire, and furnished with two conspicuous marginal glands on the wedge-shaped or some- 
times somewhat rounded base. When they first unfold they are glabrous or faintly puberulent on the 
lower surface along the principal veins, and are then thin and membranaceous; they become subcoria- 
ceous before reaching maturity, and are two and a half to three inches long, an inch and a half to 
nearly two inches broad, with slender petioles half an inch long and rather stout midribs grooved on 
the upper surface, and arcuate primary veins. In Florida they appear in early summer, and are then 
light green on the upper and pale on the lower surface, becoming yellow-green at maturity and remain- 
ing on the branches until their second year. The clusters of flowers, which are rather shorter than the 
petioles, appear on the shoots of the year; they are at first pubescent but soon become glabrate. The 
fruit, which ripens late in the autumn, is a quarter of an inch across and dark orange-red, and is borne 
on pedicels half an inch in length, or often a little longer. 
Colubrina reclinata is confined in Florida to Umbrella Key, to the north end of Key Largo, and 
to a few of the small islands south of Elhott’s Key. It inhabits Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Cuba, 
Hayti, Ste. Croix, and the Virgin and Bahama groups. In Florida it attains its greatest size on 
Umbrella Key, where it forms a forest of considerable extent. 
The wood of Colubrina reclinata is heavy, hard, and very strong, although ultimately brittle, with 
a satiny surface susceptible of receiving a good polish. It contains many small open ducts and numer- 
ous thin medullary rays, and is dark brown tinged with yellow, the thin sapwood, consisting of eight 
or ten layers of annual growth, being light yellow. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 
0.8208, a cubic foot weighing 51.15 pounds. According to Baron Eggers,” the leaves of this tree are 
sometimes used in Ste. Croix and the Virgin Islands in the preparation of a stomachic beverage. 
The earliest description of Colubrina reclinata, and the only figure of it which has been pub- 
1 On the side of the deep furrows where the bark does not scale 2 Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. No. 13, 40. 
off, the edges of forty or fifty of the layers of papery bark can 
sometimes be counted. 
