HAMAMELIDEZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 1] 
vlabrous, from one third to half an inch in length, and caducous. The flowers appear from March to 
the end of May, when the leaves are more than half grown, the males in terminal racemes two or three 
inches long and coated with rufous hairs, the females in a solitary head borne on a slender glabrous 
peduncle an inch to two inches in length and developed from the axil of one of the upper leaves. The 
heads of male flowers, which are stalked towards the base of the raceme and nearly sessile above, are 
a quarter of an inch across and surrounded by ovate acute deciduous hairy bracts much larger than the 
lanceolate acute bracts of the female inflorescence, which is half an inch across and conspicuous from 
the broad stigmatic surfaces of the recurved and contorted styles. The fruit is an inch to an inch and 
a half in diameter, and hangs on the branches during the winter, the carpels, which rarely contain 
fertile seeds but are generally filled with abortive ovules in various stages of development, opening in 
the autumn. The seed is half an inch long and rather longer than its wing, with a light brown coat 
conspicuously marked with oblong resin-ducts. 
Liqudanbar Styraciflua is distributed from Fairfield County, Connecticut, to southeastern Mis- 
souri, southward to Cape Canaveral and the shores of Tampa Bay, Florida, and through Arkansas and 
the Indian Territory to the valley of the Trinity River in Texas; it reappears on the mountains of 
central and southern Mexico’ and ranges southward to the highlands of Guatemala.’ In some parts 
of the United States, especially in the maritime region of the southern Atlantic states and in the basin 
of the lower Mississippi River, the Sweet Gum is one of the most common trees in the forests of low 
rich river-bottom lands which are usually inundated every year; in such situations, growing with the 
Cotton Gum, the Chestnut White Oak, the Willow Oak, the Red Maple, the Black Gum, and the 
Water Ash, it develops tall straight trunks free from branches to a height of seventy or eighty feet 
above the ground.’ In the northern and middle states it is found on the borders of swamps and in 
low wet swales, where in company with the Red Maple, the Swamp White Oak, the Tupelo, the White 
Ash, and the Red Ash, it often grows in great numbers; occasionally the Sweet Gum appears on drier 
and more elevated ground, where it remains small; and in the north it rarely grows more than sixty or 
seventy feet tall or produces a trunk more than two feet in diameter. 
The wood of Liguidambar Styraciflua is heavy, hard, straight, and close-grained, although not 
very strong; it is bright brown tinged with red, with thin almost white sapwood composed of sixty or 
seventy layers of annual growth. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.5910, a cubic 
foot weighing 36.83 pounds. The wood of the Sweet Gum is smooth and satiny and can be made to 
take a beautiful polish ; it is difficult to season and warps and shrinks badly in drying,* but in spite 
of this serious defect it is now used in large quantities, especially in the western states, in the outside 
finish of houses, in cabinet-making, for street-pavements, cheap dishes, and fruit-boxes. 
The leaves contain tannin, and have been recommended as a substitute for Oak-bark for tanning 
leather.’ 
In 1615 the first account of this tree from the pen of the Spanish naturalist Hernandez was 
published in the City of Mexico,’ and the resin, which resembled the liquid storax of the east, soon 
1 Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth, Nov. Gen. et Spec. vii. 273. — 
Kunth, Syn. Pl. <Equin. iv. 266.— Seemann, Bot. Voy. Herald, 346. 
— Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. i. 400. 
2 Donnell Smith, Pl. Guatemal. No. 1855. 
agréable lorsque 1’on n’en briile qu’une petite quantité.” (Le Page 
du Pratz, Histoire de la Louisiane, ii. 27, t.) 
5 Porcher, Resources of Southern Fields and Forests, 345. 
6 Del arbol de Liquidambar, que los naturales llaman “X ochiocotzotl,” 
8 Sargent, Garden and Forest, ii. 232, f. 
4 «Le Copalm réunit deux grandes qualités ; lune, d’étre extré- 
mement commun, |’autre de donner un baume dont les vertus sont 
infinies . 
sort de son cceur des baguettes de cing & six pieds de longeur. On 
. . Son bois est si tendre & si souple, qu’en l’abbattant il 
ne peut l’employer & aucuns ouvrages 4 cause qu'il travaille sans 
cesse, & se tourmente de telle sorte, qu'il se met dans des figures 
surprenantes que l’on ne voit dans aucun bois du monde. On n’ose 
méme le briiler parce que son odeur est trop forte, quoiqu’elle soit 
“ Quauhzihuitl,” Francisco Hernandez, Nov. Pl. Hist. lib. i. pt. ii. 
cap. 18 (Ximenes, Spanish ed. Mexico, 1615). 
Styrax Aceris folio, Parkinson, Theatr. 1529. 
Acer Virginianum odoratum, Hermann, Cat. Hort. Lugd. Bat. 
641. — Boerhaave, Ind. Alt. ii. 234. 
Styrax arbor Virginiana Aceris folio, potins Platanus Virginiana 
Styracem fundens, Ray, Hist. Pl. i. 1799. — Commelyn, Hort. i. 191, 
t. 98. 
Liquid-ambari arbor s. Styraciflua Aceris folio, fructu tribuloide 
