SAPOTACES. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 179 
DIPHOLIS SALICIFOLIA. 
Bustic. Cassada. 
FLOWER-CLUSTERS shorter than the petioles. Leaves oblong-lanceolate or obovate, 
gradually contracted into slender petioles. 
Dipholis salicifolia, A. de Candolle, Prodr. viii. 188 Oce. i. 491. — Willdenow, Spec. i. pt. ii. 1086 (excl. Side- 
(1844). — Delessert, Icon. Select. v.17, t. 40. — Miquel, roxylum Mastichodendron).— Aiton, Hort. Kew. ed. 2, 
Martius Fl. Brasil. vii. 45, t. 18. — Chapman, F7. 274. — ii. 13. — Roemer & Schultes, Syst. iv. 494. — Don, Gen. 
Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. 67.— Sargent, Forest Trees Syst. iv. 29. — Dietrich, Syn. i. 621. 
N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 101. Sideroxylum salicifolium, Lamarck, Ji. ii. 42 (1793). — 
Achras salicifolia, Linneus, Spec. ed. 2, 470 (1762). Gertner f. Fruct. iti. 124, t. 202. 
Bumelia salicifolia, Swartz, Prodr. 50 (1788); Fl. Ind. 
A tree, in Florida sometimes forty to fifty feet in height, with a straight trunk eighteen or twenty 
inches in diameter, slender upright branches forming a narrow graceful head, and thin terete branchlets. 
The bark of the trunk is a third of an inch thick and is broken into thick square plate-like brown scales 
tinged with red. The branches, when they first appear, are coated with rufous pubescence, and later 
become ashy gray or light brown tinged with red, and are marked by numerous circular pale lenticels 
and by small elevated orbicular leaf-scars, displaying near the centre a compact cluster of fibro-vascular 
bundle-scars. The leaves are oblong-lanceolate or narrowly obovate, acute, acuminate, or rounded at the 
apex, gradually contracted at the base, and entire, with slightly thickened cartilaginous wavy margins ; 
when they unfold they are thickly coated with lustrous rufous pubescence, and at maturity are thin and 
firm, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, pale yellow-green on the lower, three to five inches 
long, half an inch to an inch and a quarter broad, and glabrous or slightly puberulous on the lower side 
of the narrow pale midribs, with inconspicuous veins, reticulate veinlets, and slender petioles varying 
from half an inch to an inch in length; they appear in Florida in the spring and remain on the branches 
between one and two years. The flowers, which open during March and April, are an eighth of an 
inch long, and, produced in dense many-flowered fascicles crowded on the branchlets of the year or of 
the previous year for a distance of eight or twelve inches, are borne on thick pedicels a quarter of an 
inch long, coated with rufous pubescence and developed from the axils of ovate acute scarious bracts 
barely a twelfth of an inch in length. The calyx is half the length of the corolla, its outer surface 
being covered with rusty silky pubescence ; the linear acute exterior appendages of the corolla-lobes are 
as long as the oval acute irregularly toothed staminodia, these being shorter than the stamens, which 
are composed of slender filaments and oblong anthers. The ovary is narrowly ovate, glabrous, and 
gradually contracted into a slender style shorter than the corolla and stigmatic at the apex. The 
fruit, which is solitary or rarely clustered, is produced in Florida rather sparingly and ripens in the 
autumn ; it is oblong or subglobose, black, and a quarter of an inch long, with thin dry flesh and a 
single oblong seed. . . — 
Dipholis salicifolia grows in Florida on the shores of Bay Biscayne, on rich hummock soil, with 
the Mastic, the Live Oak, the Cuban Pine, the Palmetto, the Black Calabash, the Marlberry, the Gumbo 
Limbo, and Eugenia Garberi, and on several of the southern keys, although here it is nowhere common. 
It also inhabits the Bahamas! and many of the West Indian islands.” 
The wood of Dipholis salicifolia is very heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, and 
. ° i 2 A. Richard, Fl. Cub. iii. 85, t. 54°. — Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. 
1 Bi k, Rep. Missouri Bot. Gard. iv. 104. . ’ ’ ’ 
ee a Ind. 401 ; Cat. Pl. Cub. 164. 
