MYRTACES. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 4% 
EUGENIA PROCERA. 
Stopper. 
Leaves usually broadly ovate, narrowed at the apex into short points, subcoria- 
ceous. 
Eugenia procera, Poiret, Lam. Dict. Suppl. iii. 129 (1813).—__ Myrtus procera, Swartz, Prodr. 17 (1788) ; Fl. Ind. Oce. 
De Candolle, Prodr. iii. 268. — Don, Gen. Syst. ii. 855. — ii. 887. — Willdenow, Spee. ii. pt. ii. 968. 
Nuttall, Sylva, i. 106, t. 28. — Dietrich, Syn. iii. 58.— Hugenia Baruensis, Grisebach, Cat. Pl. Cub. 87 (1866) 
Berg, Linnea, xxvii. 207. — Chapman, FJ. 131. — Grise- (not Jacquin). 
bach, Fl. Brit. W. Ind. 238. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. 
Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 89 (in part). 
A tree, twenty to twenty-five feet in height, with a trunk occasionally a foot in diameter. The 
bark of the trunk is a sixteenth of an inch thick, with a smooth light gray surface faintly tinged with 
red. The branchlets are slender, terete, at first light purple and covered with glaucous bloom, and 
ultimately ashy gray or almost white. The leaves, which unfold in Florida in May, are broadly ovate, 
narrowed into broad points rounded at the apex, and abruptly or gradually wedge-shaped at the base ; 
they are thin and light red at first and at maturity are subcoriaceous, two inches to two inches and a 
half in length and an inch to an inch and a half in width, conspicuously marked with black dots, olive- 
green on the upper surface, and paler on the lower, with narrow midribs slightly impressed on the upper 
side, obscure arcuate veins united near the entire thickened margins, and narrow-winged petioles from 
one third to one half of an inch in length. The flowers, which are produced in sessile axillary many- 
flowered clusters and are half an inch across when expanded, appear in Florida in April and May on 
slender glandular pedicels from one third to two thirds of an inch long and furnished at the apex with 
two lanceolate acute persistent bracts ciliate on their margins. The calyx-tube is turbinate and much 
shorter than the limb, which is divided into four glandular narrow lobes rounded at the apex and half 
the length of the broadly ovate rounded glandular white petals. The fruits ripen in Florida in succes- 
sion from September to November, and vary from two thirds of an inch to nearly an inch in diameter ; 
they are usually one-seeded, crowned with the large persistent calyx-lobes, and when first fully grown 
are orange-colored with a bright red cheek, turning black when ripe; the flesh is thin and dry and 
slightly glandular-roughened on the surface. The seed is nearly globose, with a thick pale chestnut- 
brown lustrous coat and olive-green cotyledons. 
In Florida Hugenia procera has been found only on Key West where it is common, and on 
Umbrella Key. It also inhabits San Domingo, Cuba, Jamaica, Santa Cruz, and Martinique. 
The wood of Eugenia procera is heavy, hard, close-grained, ight brown, and contains numerous 
thin medullary rays. The sapwood is indistinguishable from the heartwood. 
In the autumn, when the branches of Hugenia procera are covered with its large berries, which in 
the same cluster are sometimes bright orange and scarlet and sometimes black, it is a handsome object 
and one of the most beautiful of the small trees of southern Florida. It was discovered in San Domingo 
by the Swedish botanist Swartz, and in the United States was first noticed by Dr. J. L. Blodgett on 
Key West. 
