SAPOTACES. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 175 
BUMELIA ANGUSTIFOLIA. 
Ants’ Wood. Downward Plum. 
LEAVES spatulate or linear-oblanceolate to broadly obovate-cuneate, obtuse, coria- 
ceous, obscurely venulose-reticulate. 
Bumelia angustifolia, Nuttall, Sylva, iii. 38, t. 93 (1849). — Bumelia parvifolia, Chapman, 77.275 (not A. de Candolle) 
Radlkofer, Sitz. Math.-Phys. Cl. Acad. Miinch. xiv. pt. (1865). 
iil. 481. — Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ed. 2, ii. 68.— Sargent, Bumelia cuneata, Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. 68 (not 
Garden and Forest, ii. 447. —- Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Swartz) (1878). — Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. ii. 
Herb. ii. 257 (Man. Pl. W. Texas). 297.— Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. 
Bumelia reclinata, Torrey, Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 109 ix. 103. 
(not Ventenat) (1859). 
A tree, sometimes twenty feet in height, with a short trunk rarely exceeding six or eight inches in 
diameter, graceful pendulous branches which form a compact round head, and rigid spinescent diverging 
lateral branchlets often armed with acute slender spines sometimes an inch in length; or occasionally in 
Texas a low shrub with spreading stems. The bark of the trunk varies from one third to one half of 
an inch in thickness, and is gray tinged with red and deeply divided by longitudinal and cross fissures 
into oblong or nearly square plates. The branchlets, when they first appear, are thickly coated with 
loose pale or dark brown tomentum which soon disappears, and they become light brown tinged with 
red or ashy gray. The winter-buds are ovate, acute, and coated with rufous tomentum. The leaves 
are spatulate or linear-oblong, or sometimes broadly obovate-cuneate, rounded and occasionally emargi- 
nate at the apex, gradually narrowed at the base, and entire, with slightly thickened and revolute 
margins; they are glabrous, thick, and coriaceous, pale blue-green on the upper, and paler on the lower 
surface, an inch to an inch and a half long and a quarter of an inch to an inch and a quarter wide, 
with slender pale midribs and very obscure veins and veinlets; they are borne on petioles which are 
rarely a quarter of an inch in length, and usually remain on the branches until the end of their second 
winter. The flowers, which generally appear in October and November, barely exceed one sixteenth of 
an inch in length, and are borne in few or many-flowered crowded fascicles on slender glabrous pedicels 
seldom more than half an inch long. The calyx is glabrous and divided nearly to the base into narrow 
ovate lobes rounded at the apex and half the length of the divisions of the corolla, which are furnished 
with linear-lanceolate appendages as long as the ovate acute denticulate staminodia. The ovary is 
narrowly ovate, slightly hairy at the very base only, and gradually contracted into an elongated style. 
The fruit is oblong-oval and two thirds of an inch in length, with thick sweet flesh ; it hangs on a 
slender drooping stem, usually only one fruit being developed from each fascicle of flowers, and ripens 
in the spring. 
In Florida Bumelia angustifolia is distributed on the east coast, where it is common, from the 
shores of Indian River to the southern keys, and on the west coast, where it is much less abundant, 
from Cedar Keys to Cape Romano, being most frequently found on rocky shores and in the interior of 
low barren islands. It also inhabits the Bahama Islands,’ the valley of the Rio Grande below Laredo, 
Texas, and Nuevo Leon. 
The wood of Bumelia angustifolia is heavy, hard, although not strong, and very close-grained, 
with a satiny surface susceptible of receiving a beautiful polish ; it contains many thin medullary rays, 
1 Eggers, No. 4418 ; an unusually narrow-leaved form. 
