BORRAGINACER. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 81 
BHRETIA ELLIPTICA. 
Anaqua. Knackaway. 
FLOWERS in terminal racemose panicles. Nutlets 2. Leaves oval or oblong. 
Khretia elliptica, De Candolle, Prodr. ix. 503 (1845). ?Ehretia scabra, Kunth & Bouché, Ind. Sem. Hort. Berol. 
Torrey, Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 136.— Miers, Ann. & 1847, 12.— Walpers, Ann. i. 524.— Miers, Ann. & 
Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 4, iii. 110; Contrib. ii. 228, t. 85. — Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 4, iii. 111; Contrib. ii. 229. 
Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. pt. i. 118. — Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Ehretia ciliata, Miers, Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 4, iii. 
Am. Cent. ii. 370. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th 111; Conérid. ii. 229. 
Census U. S. ix. 114.— Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Ehretia exasperata, Miers, Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 
Herb. ii. 283 (Man. Pl. W. Texas). 4, ii. 112; Contrib. ii. 230. 
A tree, sometimes forty to fifty feet in height, with a trunk occasionally three feet in diameter, 
and stout spreading branches which form a handsome compact round-topped leafy head; usually much 
smaller within the territory of the United States, and often reduced to a low shrub. The bark of old 
trunks is sometimes an inch thick, and is deeply furrowed and divided into long thick irregular plate- 
hike scales with a gray or reddish brown surface which separates in thin flakes; or on young stems and 
on the branches it is thin, light brown, and broken into thick appressed scales. The branchlets are 
slender and terete, and when they first appear are covered like the under surface of the leaves, the 
branches of the inflorescence, and the outer surface of the calyx of the flower, with rigid hirsute pale 
hairs ; during their first winter they are ight brown tinged with red, sometimes puberulous, and often 
roughened by numerous pale lenticels. The leaf-scars are small, depressed, and obcordate, and display a 
short lunate row of minute fibro-vascular bundle-scars; in their axils are one, or two superposed minute 
buds buried in the bark, and covered with two pairs of dark scales which remain on the base of the 
growing branchlet and at maturity are lanceolate, acute, dark chestnut brown, coated with pale hairs, 
and sometimes a quarter of an inch long.’ The leaves are oval or oblong, pointed and apiculate at the 
apex, gradually rounded or wedge-shaped at the base, entire or occasionally furnished above the middle 
with a few broad teeth, and conspicuously reticulate-venulose, with short stout grooved pubescent peti- 
oles; they unfold late in the winter, and are then thin and light green, lustrous, minutely tuberculate 
and. pilose on the upper surface, and are often furnished below with tufts of white hairs in the axils of 
the veins; at maturity they are thick, subcoriaceous, dark green and roughened above by the enlarged 
circular rigid pale tubercles, and are more or less covered with soft pale or rufous pubescence below, 
especially on the narrow midribs and the numerous primary veins which are arcuate near the margins. 
The flowers are produced in compact racemose scorpioid-branched panicles two to three inches long 
and broad, terminal on short leafy branches of the year, and appear in the autumn, during the winter, 
or usually in very early spring. The bracts and bractlets are linear, acute, about a quarter of an inch 
long, and early deciduous. The calyx, which is open in the bud, is divided to the base into five linear 
acute divisions and is nearly as long as the campanulate tube of the corolla, which forms before 
anthesis an obovate bud rounded at the apex, and is half an inch across the expanded lobes, which are 
ovate, thin and white, and rather shorter than the exserted stamens. The fruit ripens in the autumn 
and in the spring, and is globose, surrounded at the base by the persistent somewhat enlarged calyx, 
light yellow, and a quarter of an inch in diameter, with thin sweet rather juicy edible flesh, and two 
two-seeded nutlets. 
1 On the specimens of Ehretia elliptica which I have examined there is no terminal bud, the winter branchlet ending in a small black 
point close to the scar of the last leaf of the previous season. 
