VERBENACES. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 103 
CITHAREXYLON VILLOSUM. 
Fiddle Wood. 
FLOWERS in elongated axillary racemes. Leaves oblong-obovate or oblong. 
Citharexylon villosum, Jacquin, Coll. i. 72 (1786) ; Icon. iv. 76. — Bocquillon, Adansonia, iii, 223, t. xiii. f. 1-9. — 
Rar. i. t. 118. — Selt. Am. Gewiich. 57, t. 144. — Willde- Chapman, F7. 309.— Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. pt. i. 
now, Spec. iii. pt. i. 309. — Persoon, Syn. ii. 142. — Aiton, 340. — Eggers, Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. No. 13, 84 (FV. 
Hort. Kew. ed. 2, iv. 36. —Schlechtendal, Linnea, vi. St. Croix and the Virgin Islands). —Hemsley, Bot. Biol. 
152 (Fl. Ins. St. Thom.).— Dietrich, Syn. iii. 614. — Am. Cent. ii. 537. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th 
Schauer, De Candolle Prodr. xi. 610. — Walpers, Rep. Census U. S. ix. 116. 
A tree, rarely exceeding in Florida twenty feet in height, with a trunk four to six inches in 
diameter, and slender upright branches which form a narrow irregularly shaped head; or often a shrub 
sending up from the ground many low stems. The bark of the trunk varies from a sixteenth to an 
eighth of an inch in thickness, and is light brown tinged with red, generally smooth, and separates into 
minute appressed scales. The branchlets, when they first appear, are slender, slightly many-angled, light 
yellow, and covered with pale simple hairs, which soon disappear; and in their second year they are 
terete and ashy gray. The leaves are oblong-obovate or oblong, acute, acuminate, rounded or emargi- 
nate at the apex, gradually narrowed at the base, and entire, with thickened slightly revolute margins ; 
while young they are pubescent on the lower surface, and at maturity they are glabrous, thick, and 
coriaceous, conspicuously reticulate-venulose, pale green, three or four inches long, and an inch or an 
inch and a half wide, with broad pale midribs rounded on the upper side, remote arcuate veins, and stout 
grooved petioles two thirds of an inch in length, which, when the leaves fall, in their second year, 
separate from their elevated nearly circular persistent woody bases. The fragrant flowers, borne on 
slender pedicels produced in the axils of scarious pubescent bracts, appear throughout the year in 
drooping axillary pubescent racemes crowded near the ends of the branches, and two to four inches in 
length. The calyx is obscurely toothed, scarious, and coated with pale hairs, or is sometimes nearly 
glabrous. The corolla, which forms before opening an obovate rounded bud, is an eighth of an inch 
across the expanded lobes of the limb, and is covered on the inner surface of the tube with pale hairs. 
The fruit is subglobose or oblong-ovate, light red-brown, very lustrous, a third of an inch in diameter, 
with thin sweet rather juicy flesh, and is inclosed nearly to the middle in the cup-like pale brown calyx, 
which is slightly and irregularly lobed or sometimes nearly entire. 
Cithareaxylon villosum, which is also an inhabitant of many of the Antilles, is common in Florida 
from Cape Canaveral to the southern keys, growing to its largest size in the United States on the shore 
of Bay Biscayne, near the mouth of the Miami River; farther north it is usually reduced to a low 
shrub. 
The wood of Citharexylon villosum is heavy, exceedingly hard and strong, close-grained, and 
susceptible of receiving a beautiful polish ; it contains numerous small regularly distributed open ducts, 
and is clear bright red, with thin lighter colored sapwood. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry 
wood is 0.8710, a cubic foot weighing 54.28 pounds. 
In the United States Citharexylon villosum was first noticed on Key West by Dr. J. L. Blodgett. 
