MYRTACER. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 43 
KUGENIA BUXIFOLIA. 
Gurgeon Stopper. Spanish Stopper. 
LEAVES ovate or obovate, rounded at the apex, short-petiolate. 
Eugenia buxifolia, Willdenow, Spec. ii. pt. ii. 960 (1799). — ii. 899.— Sprengel, Syst. ii. 484.— Kunth, Mém. Soe. 
Persoon, Syn. ii. 29.— De Candolle, Prodr. iii. 275. — Hist. Nat. Paris, i. 325. 
Don, Gen. Syst. ii. 859. — Nuttall, Sylva, i. 108, t.29.— Myrtus axillaris, Poiret, Lam. Dict. iv. 412 (not Swartz) 
Dietrich, Syn. iii. 62.— Chapman, £7. 131. — Grisebach, (1797). 
Fl. Brit. W. Ind. 236. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. Eugenia myrtoides, Poiret, Lum. Dict. Suppl. iii. 125 
10th Census U. S. ix. 88. — Hitchcock, Rep. Missouri (1813). 
Bot. Gard. iv. 86. Myrtus Poireti, Sprengel, Syst. ii. 483 (1825). 
Myrtus buxifolia, Swartz, Prodr.78 (1788) ; Fl. Ind. Occ. Hugenia triplinervia, y. buxifolia, Berg, Linwra, xxvii. 
191 (excl. syn. H. Monticola) (1854). 
A small shrubby tree, in Florida rarely twenty feet in height, with a short trunk occasionally a 
foot in diameter; or often a shrub with numerous stems. The surface of the bark of the trunk, which 
barely exceeds an eighth of an inch in thickness, is ight brown tinged with red and is broken into 
small thick square scales. The branchlets are terete, slender, and coated at first with thick rufous 
tomentum ; at the end of a few months they are ashy gray or gray tinged with red, and are often more 
or less twisted or contorted. The leaves are ovate or obovate, rounded at the apex, and sessile or 
contracted into very short thick petioles, and entire or occasionally slightly and remotely crenulate- 
toothed above the middle; they are an inch to an inch and a half long, half an inch broad, thick and 
coriaceous, dark green on the upper surface, yellow-green and marked with minute black dots on the 
lower, with narrow inconspicuous midribs and incurved nearly obsolete veins arcuate and united near 
the slightly thickened and revolute margins; in Florida they usually unfold in November and remain 
on the branches until the end of their second winter, often turning red or partly red before falling. 
The flowers, which appear in Florida from midsummer until early autumn in short rufous pubescent 
racemes clustered in the axils of the old leaves or often of those which have fallen, are borne on short 
thick pedicels and are an eighth of an inch across when expanded. The bracts are minute, lanceolate- 
acute, and persistent ; the bractlets, which are placed immediately below the flowers, are broadly ovate- 
acute. The calyx is glandular-punctate, globose, ovoid, and pubescent on the outer surface, with four 
ovate rounded: lobes much shorter than the four ovate white petals which are rounded at the apex, 
ciliate on the margins, and glandular-punctate. The fruit is a globose black and glandularly roughened 
berry crowned with the large calyx-lobes, one third of an inch in diameter, with thin aromatic flesh, 
and is usually one-seeded. The seed is an eighth of an inch across, with a thick pale brown lustrous 
cartilaginous coat and a pale olive-green embryo. 
Eugenia buxifolia, which also inhabits several of the Antilles, is distributed in Florida from Cape 
Canaveral on the east coast to the southern keys, and from the banks of the Caloosa River on the west 
coast to Cape Sable. On Key West and some of the other Florida islands it is one of the most 
common plants, forming on the coral rock a large part of the shrubby second growth which now 
occupies ground from which the original forest has been removed. 
The wood of Hugenia buxifolia is very heavy and exceedingly hard, strong, and close-grained, 
and contains numerous thin medullary rays; it is dark brown shaded with red, with thick lighter 
colored sapwood composed of fifteen or twenty layers of annual growth. The specific gravity of the 
absolutely dry wood is 0.9360, a cubic foot weighing 58.33 pounds. On the Florida keys it is some- 
times used for fuel. 
