SAPOTACES. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 183 
MIMUSOPS SIEBERI. 
Wild Dilly. 
STAMINODIA scale-like, triangular, entire. Leaves elliptical-oblong or slightly obovate, 
retuse. 
Mimusops Sieberi, A. de Candolle, Prodr. viii. 204 (1844). Mimusops dissecta, Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. Ind. 400 (in 
— Chapman, FV. 275. — Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. 69. — part) (1864). 
Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. 8. ix. 103. Achras Bahamensis, Baker, Hooker Icon. xviii. t. 1795 
Achras Zapotilla, var. parviflora, Nuttall, Sylva, iii. 28, t. (1888). 
90 (1849). Mimusops Floridana, Engler, Bot. Jahrb. xii. 524 (1890). 
A tree, in Florida rarely more than thirty feet in height, with a short gnarled trunk twelve or 
fifteen inches in diameter, usually hollow and defective, and stout branches and branchlets which form 
a compact round head. The bark of the trunk is a quarter of an inch thick, and is irregularly divided 
by deep fissures into ridges rounded on the back and broken into small nearly square plates. The 
branchlets, which are clustered at the ends of the branches of the previous year, are coated, when they 
first appear, with dark rufous pubescence, and at the end of a few weeks are glabrous, or nearly so, 
and light orange-brown ; in their second year they are stout, covered with thick ashy gray or light red- 
dish brown scaly bark, and marked by the elevated obcordate leaf-scars, which display three large dark 
conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars. The buds are ovate, acute, and covered with dark rusty brown 
tomentum. The leaves, which are clustered at the ends of the branchlets, are involute in vernation, 
elliptical-oblong or occasionally slightly obovate, rounded and retuse at the apex, rounded or wedge- 
shaped at the base, and entire, with slightly thickened revolute margins; when they unfold they are 
bright red and slightly puberulous on the under surface of the midribs, and at maturity are thick and 
coriaceous, bright green and lustrous, covered on the upper surface with a slight glaucous bloom, con- 
spicuously reticulate-venulose, three to four inches long and an inch to an inch and a half broad, with 
stout midribs glabrous or puberulous with rusty hairs below and deeply impressed above ; they are borne 
on slender grooved petioles from half an inch to an inch in length and usually covered with rusty 
pubescence, especially while young, and, appearing in Florida in April and May, fall during their 
second year. The flowers, which open in the spring, are borne on slender pedicels, coated with rusty 
tomentum, an inch or more long, and produced at the ends of the branches from the axils of leaves of 
the previous year, or from those of leaves two years old which have fallen. The flower-buds are ovate, 
rounded at the apex, and clothed with rusty tomentum. The calyx is narrowly ovate, and divided 
nearly to the bottom into six lobes; the lobes of the outer row are lanceolate, acute, covered on the outer 
surface with rusty brown tomentum and on the inner with pale pubescence, and thickened at the base, 
where they are usually marked on the outer surface with a black spot; those of the inner row are 
ovate, acute, keeled towards the base, light greenish yellow and covered with pale pubescence. The 
corolla is light yellow, tinged with green, and two thirds of an inch across when expanded, with six 
spreading lanceolate acute divisions, entire, or erosely toothed towards the apex, and furnished at the 
base on each side with a slender acute appendage one half or two thirds of their length. The stamino- 
dia are minute, nearly triangular, entire, and free from the stamens. The ovary is narrowly ovate, dark 
red, puberulous toward the base with pale hairs, and gradually narrowed into an elongated exserted 
style stigmatic at the apex. The fruit is subglobose or slightly obovate, flattened and compressed at the 
apex, surrounded at the base by the remnants of the persistent calyx with its reflexed lobes, and 
