COMBRETACER, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 21 
TERMINALIA BUCERAS. 
Black Olive Tree. 
FLoweErs perfect, in simple axillary spikes ; calyx campanulate, 5-toothed, persist- 
ent. Fruit ovoid, conical-oblique, irregularly 5-angled, coriaceous. Leaves alternate, 
eglandular, clustered at the ends of the branches, persistent. 
Terminalia Buceras, Bentham & Hooker, Gen. i. 685 dolle, Prodr. iii. 10.— Don, Gen. Syst. ii. 657. — Spach, 
(1865). — Sargent, Bot. Gazette, xi. 314; Garden and Hist. Vég. iv. 297.—Elichler, Martius Fl. Brasil. xiv. 
Forest, ii. 435. pt. ii. 94, t. 35, f. 1. 
Bucida Buceras, Browne, Nat. Hist. Jam. t. 23, f. 1 Bucida angustifolia, De Candolle, Prodr. iii. 10 (1828). — 
(1756). — Linneus, Amen. v. 397; Spec. ed. 2, 556. — Den, Gen. Syst. ii. 657. — A. Richard, Fl. Cud. ii. 240. — 
Lamarck, J7/. ii. 484, t. 356. — Willdenow, Syec. ii. 630. — Grisebach, Cat. Pl. Cub. 109. 
Poiret, Lam. Dict. Suppl. i. 733.— Persoon, Syn. i.485.— Bucida Buceras, var. angustifolia, Eichler, Martius Fi. 
Bot. Reg. xi. t. 907. — Sprengel, Syst. ii. 359. — De Can- Brasil. xiv. pt. ii. 95 (1867). 
A tree, with naked buds, in Florida sometimes forming a single straight trunk or sometimes a 
short prostrate trunk two to three feet in diameter, from which usually spring several straight upright 
stems forty to fifty feet in height and twelve to eighteen inches in diameter. The principal branches 
are stout, and, spreading nearly at right angles with the trunk, make a broad handsome head; they are 
covered, like the trunk, with thick bark, the gray surface of which is tinged with orange-brown and 
broken into short appressed scales. The branchlets are slender, terete, trichotomously or dichotomously 
forked, and zigzag by their unequal and irregular growth, the terminal bud often becoming a short 
thick spur, while the lateral buds develop into branches, or sometimes one or both into slender spines 
one or two inches in length ; when they first appear they are clothed with short pale rufous pubescence 
which often does not entirely disappear before the end of their second year, when they are covered with 
light reddish brown bark which separates into thin narrow shreds. The leaves are obovate to spatulate- 
lanceolate, rounded and slightly emarginate or minutely apiculate at the apex, and gradually contracted 
at the base into short petioles ; they are thick and coriaceous, with slightly thickened revolute margins, 
bluish green on the upper, and yellow-green on the lower surface, pubescent while young, especially 
below, and at maturity are glabrous with the exception of the rufous hairs which cover the under 
surface of the stout midribs and the petioles; they are from two to three inches long, an inch to an 
inch and a half broad, with petioles varying from one third to one half of an inch in length, and are 
crowded together at the ends of the spurs and of the lateral branches. In Florida the flowers appear 
in April, in slender spikes thickly coated with rufous pubescence, and an inch and a half to two inches 
in length; they develop in the axils of lanceolate acute caducous bractlets, from globular sessile buds, 
and are greenish white, hairy on the outer surface, and an eighth of an inch long. The calyx-lobes are 
minute and pubescent on both surfaces; the five long stamens are inserted opposite the lobes under the 
five-lobed epigynous hairy disk, and the five shorter alternate stamens a little higher up on the calyx- 
tube ; the anthers are sagittate, and the base of the slender style is coated with pale hairs... The fruit 
is indehiscent, one third of an inch in length, light brown, puberulous on the outer surface, crowned 
with the enlarged persistent calyx, and composed of a thin membranaceous exocarp inseparable from 
the crustaceous endocarp which is porous toward the interior. The seed is ovate and acute, with a 
broad raphe and a thin chestnut-brown testa. 
1 Eichler (Martius Fl. Brasil. xiv. pt. ii. 94) describes male and specimens from Florida, however, the flowers all appear to be 
female flowers scattered irregularly in the same spike. On the _ perfect. 
