184. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. SAPOTACES. 
crowned by the thickened persistent style; it is an inch or an inch and a half in diameter, and is 
borne on a stout erect stem an inch or more long, and, ripening at the end of a year in the spring or 
early autumn, is still on the branches when the tree is again in flower; the fruit is usually one-seeded 
by abortion, and is covered with a thick dry outer coat, roughened with minute, russet-brown scales, 
and inclosing the thick spongy flesh filled with milky juice. The seed is half an inch long, with an 
elongated lateral hilum. The fruit is devoured by many birds and other animals. 
The wood of Mimusops Siebert is very heavy, hard, strong, and close-grained, with numerous 
obscure medullary rays. It is rich very dark brown, with lighter colored sapwood. The specific gravity 
of the absolutely dry wood is 1.0838, a cubic foot weighing 67.54 pounds. 
Mimusops Siebert is found in Florida only on the southern keys, where it is not uncommon ; it 
also inhabits the Bahamas,’ and probably many of the other West Indian islands. 
The specific name commemorates the scientific labors of F. W. Sieber,’ the botanical traveler and 
collector, who found this tree on the island of Trinidad. 
The Wild Dilly was discovered on the Bahama Islands by Mark Catesby, who published the earliest 
description of it in his Natural History of Carolina’ 
1 Hitchcock, Rep. Missouri Bot. Gard. iv. 104. Europe with plants collected in the Orient and in a journey round 
2 Franz Wilhelm Sieber (1785-1844), a native of Prague and by the world which he made in 1822-24. 
profession an apothecary, who enriched the principal herbaria of 8 Anona foliis Laurinis, in summitate incisis ; fructu compresso 
scabre fusco, in medio acumine longo, ii. 87, t. 87. 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE. 
Puate CCLI. Munusors Sieperi. 
A flowering and fruiting branch, natural size. 
. Diagram of a flower. 
A flower, enlarged. 
Vertical section of a flower, enlarged. 
. An ovule, much magnified. 
Cross section of a fruit, showing the seed, natural size. 
. Vertical section of a fruit, natural size. 
A seed, natural size. 
OWHAAMAR WH 
. An embryo, enlarged. 
