BIGNONIACE. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 99 
CRESCENTIA CUCURBITINA. 
Black Calabash. 
Fruit ovate-oblong, umbonate. Seeds large, 2-lobed. Leaves obovate-oblong or 
ovate-oblong, alternate. 
Crescentia cucurbitina, Linneus, Mant. 250 (1771). — Census U. S. ix. 116. — Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ed. 2, ii. 
Swartz, Obs. 234. — Willdenow, Spec. iii. 311. — Persoon, pt. i. 456. 
Syn. ii. 168. — Aiton, Hort. Kew. ed. 2, iv. 37.— Lunan, Crescentia ovata, Burman f. Fl. Ind. 132 (1768). 
Hort. Jam. i. 141. — Geertner f. Fruct. iii. 230, t. 223. — Crescentia latifolia, Lamarck, Dict. i. 558 (1783); Jd. 
Dietrich, Syn. iii. 567. — Don, Gen. Syst. iv. 232. — iii. 96, t. 547. — Miller, Dict. ed. 8, No. 2. — Descour- 
De Candolle, Prodr. ix. 246. — Seemann, Hooker Jour. tilz, Fl. Méd. Antill. iii. 143, t. 182. — Miers, Trans. 
Bot. and Kew Gard. Mise. vi. 274. — Walpers, Ann. v. Linn. Soc. xxvi. 176. 
524. — Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. Ind. 445. — Eggers, Crescentia lethifera, Tussac, FZ. Antiil. iv. 50, t.17 (1827). 
Vidensk. Medd. fra nat. For. Kjébenh. 1876, 1386 (Fl. Crescentia obovata, Bentham, Bot. Voy. Sulphur, 180, t. 
St. Croix); Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. No. 13, 79 (#1. St. 46 (1844). — Miers, Trans. Linn. Soc. xxvi. 175. 
Croix and the Virgin Islands). — Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Crescentia, species, Cooper, Smithsonian Rep. 1860, 439. 
Am. Cent. ii. 498. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th ?Crescentia coriacea, Miers, Trans. Linn. Soc. xxvi. 177, 
t. 9 (1867). 
A tree, in Florida eighteen or twenty feet in height, with a trunk four or five inches in diameter, 
and long slender drooping branches covered with warts. The bark of the trunk is an eighth of an inch 
thick, light brown tinged with red, and irregularly divided into large thin scales. The branchlets are 
stout, slightly angled, roughened and somewhat enlarged at the nodes by the thickening of the large 
crowded cup-shaped persistent woody bases of the leaves, and are covered with thin creamy white bark, 
which in the third year becomes dark or ashy gray. The buds are protected by linear acute apiculate 
scales, which become woody and do not disappear for a year or two. The leaves, which are alternate 
and crowded near the ends of the branches, are obovate-oblong or ovate-oblong, contracted into short 
broad points or rarely rounded or emarginate at the apex, gradually narrowed at the base into short 
thick glandular petioles, and entire, with cartilaginous slightly revolute margins; they are coriaceous, 
dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler and yellow-green on the lower surface, six to eight 
inches long and an inch and a half to four inches wide, with broad stout midribs deeply impressed on 
the upper side, conspicuous primary veins arcuate and united near the margins, and reticulate veinlets. 
Unfolding in the spring, they do not fall until their second year. The flowers, which appear in April 
and May, and also in the autumn, and emit a strong fcetid odor, are solitary in the axils of the upper 
leaves, and are borne on thick drooping peduncles an inch and a half to two inches long, furnished 
below the middle with two minute rigid acute bractlets and enlarged at the apex into the thick oblique 
receptacles. The calyx, which is light green and slightly glandular at the base, forms an obovate 
rounded bud, and in anthesis splits nearly to the bottom into two ovate pointed lobes which are nearly 
as long as the tube of the corolla. The corolla is thick and leathery, dull purple except on the lower 
side, which is sometimes creamy white and marked with narrow purple bands, and two inches long, 
with a narrow tube creamy white on the inner surface, slightly contracted above the base, ventricose on 
the lower side by a deep transverse fold, and abruptly dilated into the oblique limb which is erosely 
cut on the margins, and obscurely two-lipped ; the upper lip is slightly divided into two reflexed lobes ; 
the lower is obscurely three-lobed. The stamens are inserted near the middle of the tube of the corolla 
in two pairs, those of the anterior pair below the others and above the posterior linear staminode. 
The ovary is obliquely conical, narrowed into a long exserted style divided at the apex into two ovate 
