8 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. EBENACEZ. 
pubescence. During their first winter they are pubescent or glabrous, light brown to ashy gray, and 
marked with occasional small orange-colored lenticels and elevated semicircular leaf-scars with deep 
horizontal lunate depressions in which appear the ends of the crowded fibro-vascular bundles ; later they 
are reddish brown and are covered with thin bark often somewhat broken by longitudinal fissures. The 
winter-buds are broadly ovate, acute, an eighth of an inch long, and covered with thick imbricated dark 
red-brown or purple lustrous scales which often remain at the base of the young branchlets during 
the season. The leaves are alternate, revolute in vernation, oval, shortly acuminate at the apex, and 
abruptly or gradually narrowed, or rounded or often cordate at the base; when they unfold they are 
thin, light green or red, pubescent on the lower surface, puberulous on the upper surface, and ciliate on 
the margins with long soft white hairs; at maturity they are coriaceous, dark green and lustrous 
above, pale and often pubescent below, four to six inches long, and two to three inches wide, with 
broad flat midribs, about six pairs of conspicuous primary veins arcuate near the margins, and reticulate 
veinlets ; they are borne on stout pubescent petioles which vary from half an inch to an inch in length, 
and fall early in the autumn without changing color, or sometimes turn orange or scarlet. The flowers 
appear from April in Texas to the end of June in New England, when the leaves are more than half 
grown, on shoots of the year, the males in two to three-flowered pubescent pedunculate cymes, their 
pedicels in the axils of minute lanceolate acute caducous bracts, and furnished near the middle with two 
minute caducous bractlets, the females solitary, on separate trees, their short recurved pedicels covered 
by two conspicuous acute bractlets ciliate on the margins, and often a quarter of an inch long. The 
corolla of the staminate flower is tubular, a third of an inch long, slightly contracted below the short 
acute reflexed lobes which before expansion form a pointed four-angled bud not inclosed in and rather 
longer than the broadly ovate acute foliaceous ciliate calyx-lobes with inflexed margins. There are 
sixteen stamens with short slightly hairy free filaments inserted in the bottom of the corolla in two 
rows and in pairs, those of the outer row being rather longer and opposite those of the inner row, and 
linear lanceolate anthers opening throughout their length. The ovary is rudimentary or wanting. 
The pistillate flower is three quarters of an inch long,with a greenish yellow or creamy white corolla 
nearly half an inch broad when fully expanded ; in this, below the middle, are inserted in one row eight 
small stamens with short filaments and sagittate abortive or sometimes fertile anthers." The ovary is 
conical, pilose toward the apex, ultimately eight-celled by the development of a false partition from the 
face of each of the original four cells, with a solitary ovule in each cell, and gradually narrowed into 
the four slender spreading styles which are slightly two-lobed at the apex and hairy at the base. The 
fruit, which contains one to eight seeds or is sometimes seedless, is borne on a short thick woody stem 
often persistent on the branches during the winter, and ripens at midsummer at the south and late in 
the autumn at the north, where it hangs on the leafless branches until the beginning of winter; it 
is crowned with the remnants of the style, and is usually depressed-globose or slightly obovate-oblong, 
and an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, although it varies in different parts of the country and 
on different individuals in size, shape, and quality; it is pale orange-color, often with a bright red 
cheek, covered with a slight glaucous bloom, and turns yellowish brown when partly decayed by freez- 
ing; the flesh, which is exceedingly austere while green, is yellowish brown, sweet, and luscious when 
fully ripe, although, except in the extreme southern parts of the country, it requires the action of frost 
to make it edible; the fruiting calyx is spreading, an inch to an inch and a half across, with broadly 
ovate pointed or rounded spreading lobes recurved on the margins. The seeds are oblong, much 
flattened, half an inch long, a third of an inch broad, with a thick hard lustrous brown pitted testa, a 
conspicuous truncate hilum, and a slender raphe. 
The most northern place where Diospyros Virginiana is known to grow naturally is Lighthouse 
Point in New Haven, Connecticut. It is not uncommon on Long Island, and is abundant in all the 
1 Jt is not unusual to find abundant crops of fruit on isolated pistillate trees, and such fruits often contain seeds with well-developed 
embryos, although they appear to be more often seedless. 
