MYRTACES. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 45 
EUGENIA MONTICOLA. 
Stopper. White Stopper. 
LEAVES ovate, narrowed at the apex into broad points, distinctly petiolate. 
Eugenia Monticola, De Candolle, Prodr. iii. 275 (1828).— Myrtus Monticola, Swartz, Prodr. 78 (1788); Fl. Ind. 
Don, Gen. Syst. ii. 859. — Dietrich, Syn. iii. 62. — Chap- Oce. ii. 898. — Sprengel, Syst. ii. 484. 
man, #2. 131.—Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. Ind. 236.— Hugenia triplinervia, Berg, Linnea, xxvii. 190 (in part) 
Sargent, Yorest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 89. — (1854). 
Hitchcock, Rep. Missouri Bot. Gard. iv. 86. Eugenia axillaris, Berg, Linnea, xxvii.201 (in part) (1854). 
A tree, twenty to twenty-five feet in height, with a trunk occasionally a foot in diameter; or 
toward the northern limit of its range in Florida a low shrub. The bark of the trunk is an eighth 
of an inch thick and is divided by irregular shallow fissures, the surface of the broad ridges finally 
separating into small thin light brown scales. The branchlets are terete, rather stout and rigid, ashy 
gray or gray slightly tinged with red, and often covered with small wart-like elevations. The leaves 
are ovate, gradually or abruptly narrowed at the apex into short wide points, and rounded and con- 
tracted at the base into broad winged petioles ; they are thick and coriaceous, dark green on the upper, 
and paler and covered with minute black spots on the lower surface, with broad midribs deeply 
impressed above, and conspicuous arcuate veins united near the thickened revolute entire margins, 
and are an inch and a half to two inches and a half long and half an inch broad with petioles one third 
of an inch in length. The flowers, which appear in Florida at midsummer in short axillary racemes 
and are an eighth of an inch across when expanded, are borne on stout pedicels; these vary from one 
sixteenth to nearly one half of an inch in length and are covered with pale white hairs and furnished 
near the middle or toward the apex with two acute minute persistent bractlets. The calyx is broadly 
ovate, glandular-punctate, coated on the outer surface with pale hairs, and four-lobed, with ovate 
rounded lobes shorter than the four ovate glandular petals. The fruit is a black globose glandular- 
punctate berry usually one-seeded, half an inch in diameter and crowned with the nearly obsolete 
calyx-lobes. The seed is globose, with a pale brown chartaceous coat and light olive-green cotyledons. 
In Florida the fruits ripen in slow succession from November to April and are edible and rather juicy, 
with a sweet agreeable flavor. 
Eugenia Monticola is not common in Florida, although it is distributed from the shores of the 
St. John’s River in the northern part of the state to the southern islands, where it occurs occasionally 
on Key West, Key Largo, and on upper Metacombe and Elliott’s Keys. It is an inhabitant also of 
several of the West Indian islands. 
The wood of Hugenia Monticola is heavy, hard, strong, and very close-grained, with numerous 
thin medullary rays. It is brown often tinged with red, with thin darker colored sapwood composed of 
five or six layers of annual growth. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.9156, a cubic 
foot weighing 57.06 pounds.’ 
Eugenia Monticola was discovered in San Domingo by the Swedish botanist Swartz, and in 
Florida was first noticed on Key West by Dr. J. L. Blodgett. 
1 Eugenia Monticola, like the other species of this genus, grows diameter and shows one hundred and sixteen layers of annual 
slowly in Florida. In the Jesup Collection of North American growth, and the other is three inches in diameter, with ninety-five 
Woods in the American Museum of Natural History, New York, layers of annual growth. 
are two log specimens from the Florida keys ; one is six inches in 
