SAPOTACE. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 173 
BUMELIA LYCIOIDES. 
Ironwood. Buckthorn. 
LEAVES oblanceolate to obovate-oblong, thin, finely venulose-reticulate. 
Bumelia lycioides, Gaertner f. Fruct. iii. 127, t. 202 
(1805). — Persoon, Syn. i. 237. — Willdenow, Enum. 
249; Berl. Baumz. ed. 2, 68.—Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. 
i. 155.— Nuttall, Gen. i. 185; Sylva, iii. 31, t. 91. — 
Roemer & Schultes, Syst. iv. 495.— Hayne, Dendr. Fl. 
19. — Elliott, Sk. i. 287. — Sprengel, Syst. i. 664. — Don, 
Gen. Syst. iv. 30. — Dietrich, Syn. i. 621. — Spach, Hist. 
Vég. ix. 388. — A. de Candolle, Prodr. viii. 189. — Chap- 
man, Fl. 275. — Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. 68. — Hems- 
ley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. ii. 298. — Sargent, Forest Trees 
266-269. — Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. ii. 257 
(Man. Pl. W. Texas). 
Sideroxylon lycioides, Linnzus, Spec. ed. 2, 279 (1762). — 
Wangenheim, Nordam. Holz. 117.— Lamarck, Dict. i. 
246 ; Ill. ii. 42. — Willdenow, Spec. i. pt. ii. 1090. — 
Michaux, 27. Bor.-Am. i. 122.— Du Mont de Courset, 
Bot. Cult. ed. 2, iii. 301. — Jaume St. Hilaire, Flore et 
Pomone, v. t. 481. 
Sideroxylon decandrum, Linnzus, Mant. 48 (1767). — 
Willdenow, Spec. i. pt. ii. 1091. 
N. Am. 10th Census U.S. ix. 102. — Watson & Coulter, Sideroxylon leeve, Walter, £7. Car. 100 (1788). 
Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 332. — Baillon, Hist. Pl. xi. 255, f. 
A tree, twenty-five to thirty feet in height, with a short trunk rarely more than six inches in 
diameter, stout flexible branches usually unarmed or furnished with short stout slightly curved spines 
which occasionally develop into leafy spinescent branches, and short thick spur-like lateral branchlets. 
The bark of the trunk is thin and light red-brown, the generally smooth surface being broken into 
small thin persistent scales. The branchlets, when they first appear, are slightly puberulous but soon 
become glabrous; in midsummer they are light red-brown, rather lustrous and marked by numerous 
minute pale lenticels, and in their second year are dark or light brown tinged with red, or ashy gray. 
The winter-buds are minute, obtuse, nearly immersed in the bark and covered with pale dark brown 
glabrous scales. The leaves are oblanceolate to oblong-obovate, acute and rounded at the apex, 
gradually narrowed at the base, bright green and glabrous on the upper surface, light green on the 
lower surface, which is sometimes coated at first with pale pubescence, thin and rather firm, finely 
venulose-reticulate, an inch and a half to four inches long and half an inch to an inch and a half 
broad, with pale thin conspicuous midribs and primary veins rounded on the upper side; they are 
borne on slender slightly grooved petioles half an inch in length and fall in the autumn. The flowers, 
which appear in midsummer in crowded many-flowered fascicles, are borne on slender glabrous pedicels 
half an inch long. The calyx is glabrous, ovate-campanulate, with rounded lobes, and rather shorter 
than the corolla. The staminodia are broadly ovate and denticulate. The ovary is ovate, slightly 
hairy toward the base only, and gradually contracted into a short thick style. The fruit, which ripens 
and falls in the autumn, is ovoid or obovate and about two thirds of an inch long. 
Bumelia lycioides, which selects low wet soil along the borders of swamps and streams, is distrib- 
uted from the coast of Virginia and southern Illmois to Mosquito Inlet and the shores of the Caloosa 
River in Florida, and through southern Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas to the valley of the Rio Concho. 
The wood of Bumelia lycioides is heavy, hard, not strong, and close-grained, with numerous thin 
medullary rays ; it is light brown or yellow, with thick lighter colored sapwood. The specific gravity of 
the absolutely dry wood is 0.7467, a cubic foot weighing 46.53 pounds. 
The earliest account of Bumelia lycioides, prepared from a plant grown in the Botanic Garden at 
Leyden, was published by Boerhaave in 1720.1 According to Aiton? it was cultivated by Philip Miller 
Sideroxilon spinosum, foliis deciduis ; sive Lycioides, Duhamel, 
Traité des Arbres, iu. 260, t. 68. 
2 Hort. Kew. i. 262 (Sideroxylon).— Loudon, Arb. Brit. ii. 1193, 
f. 1016. 
1 Arbor; folio Salicis viridi, alterno, splendente ; spinis longis, 
alternis, ad alas foliorum, Ind. Alt. Hort. Ludg. Bat. ii. 263. 
Lycioides, Linnzeus, Hort. Cliff. 488 (excl. hab.). 
