SAPOTACE®. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 169 
BUMELIA TENAX. 
Ironwood. 
Leaves oblanceolate or spatulate to cuneate-obovate, obtuse, coated on the lower 
surface with golden or ferrugineous pubescence. 
Bumelia tenax, Willdenow, Spec. i. pt. ii. 1085 (1797) ; Obs. 92. — Desfontaines, Hist. Arb. i. 204. — Du Mont de 
Enum. 248; Berl. Baumz. ed. 2, 67.— Aiton, Hort. Courset, Bot. Cult. ed. 2, iii. 300. 
Kew, ed. 2, ii. 12.— Persoon, Syn. i. 237.— Roemer & Chrysophyllum Carolinense, Jacquin, Obs. iii. 3, t. 54 
Schultes, Syst. iv. 496. — Elliott, S&. i. 288. — Hayne, (1768). 
Dendr. Fl. 18.— Sprengel, Syst. i. 665.— Don, Gen. Sideroxylon sericeum, Walter, FZ. Car. 100 (1788). 
Syst. iv. 30.— Dietrich, Syn. i. 621.— Spach, Hist. Vég. Sideroxylon chrysophylloides, Michaux, Fl. Bor.-m. 
ix. 388. — Nuttall, Sylva, iii. 35, t. 92. — A. de Candolle, i. 123 (1803). 
Prodr. viii. 189.— Chapman, Fl. 275.— Gray, Syn. Fl. Bumelia chrysophylloides, Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. i. 155 
N. Am. ii. 68.— Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th (1814). — Nuttall, Gen. i. 185. — Watson, Dendr. Brit. 
Census U. S. ix. 101. i. 10, t. 10. — Rafinesque, FV. Ludovic. 538. 
Sideroxylon tenax, Linnzus, Mant. 48 (1767). — Jacquin, Sclerocladus tenax, Rafinesque, Sylva Tellur. 35 (1838). 
Coll. ii, 252. — Lamarck, Dict. i. 245; I71. ii. 42.— Swartz, Sclerozus tenax, Rafinesque, Aut. Bot. 73 (1840). 
A tree, twenty to thirty feet in height, with a trunk occasionally five or six inches in diameter, and 
straight spreading flexible tough branches unarmed or armed with straight stout rigid spines sometimes 
half an inch long. The bark of the trunk is thick, brown tinged with red, and divided irregularly by 
deep fissures into narrow flat reticulate ridges covered with minute appressed scales. The branchlets, 
when they first appear, are coated with silky pale pubescence often tinged with red, which soon becomes 
rusty brown and disappears before winter, when they are dark red and slightly roughened with occa- 
sional minute dark lenticels. The winter-buds are minute, subglobose, and covered by imbricated ovate 
scales, rounded at the apex and clothed with rusty brown tomentum. The leaves vary from oblanceolate- 
spatulate to cuneate-obovate, and are rounded or acute and sometimes apiculate or emarginate at the 
apex and wedge-shaped at the base; when they unfold they are coated with thick pale or light red 
silky pubescence, and at maturity are thin and firm, dark dull green, glabrous, finely venulose-reticulate 
on the upper surface, coated on the lower with soft silky golden ferrugineous pubescence, one to three 
inches in length and one half to two thirds of an inch in breadth, with prominent midribs deeply 
impressed on the upper side ; they are borne on slender hairy grooved petioles half an inch long, and 
turn yellow and fall irregularly during the winter. The flowers, which appear from May in Florida to 
July in North Carolina, are produced in many-flowered crowded fascicles from buds which at their first 
appearance in the axils of the young leaves are coated with bright red pubescence ; they are an eighth 
of an inch long, and are borne on pedicels an inch in length and coated with rufous silky pubescence, as 
is also the narrowly ovate calyx with its oblong lobes. The appendages of the corolla are ovate, acute, 
crenate, and shorter than the ovate staminodia, which are about equal to the lobes of the corolla in 
length. The ovary is narrowly ovate and gradually contracted into an elongated style. The fruit 
ripens and falls in the autumn ; it is oblong and varies from a third to half an inch in length. 
Bumelia tenax grows in dry sandy soil in the neighborhood of the coast and is distributed from 
North Carolina to Cape Canaveral and Cedar Keys, Florida. 
The wood of Bumelia tenaz is heavy, hard, close-grained, and susceptible of receiving a beautiful 
polish ; it contains numerous thin medullary rays and is light brown streaked with white, with lighter 
colored sapwood. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.7293, a cubic foot weighing 
45.45 pounds. 
