VERBENACEE. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 107 
AVICENNIA NITIDA. 
Black Mangrove. 
FLoweErs with elongated styles. Leaves oblong or lanceolate-elliptical. 
Avicennia nitida, Jacquin, Enum. Pl. Carib. 25 (1760) ; muda). — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census 
Hist. Stirp. Am. 177, t. 112, f. 1.— Linnaeus, Syst. U. S. ix. 117. — Hitchcock, Rep. Missouri Bot. Gard. iv. 
Nat. ed. 12, 427. — Icon. Am. Gewiich. iii. 47, t. 205. — 118. 
Willdenow, Spec. iii. pt. i. 395. — Persoon, Syn. ii. 143.— Avicennia tomentosa, Meyer, Prim. Fl. Esseq. 221 (not 
Chamisso, Linnea, vii. 370. — Sprengel, Syst. ii. 768. — Jacquin) (1818).— Nuttall, Sylva, iii. 79, t. 105. — Chap- 
Walpers, Rep. iv. 133. — Schauer, De Candolle Prodr. man, Fl. 310.— Vasey, Cat. Forest Trees, 19. 
xi. 699; Martius Fl. Brasil. ix. 303.— Dietrich, Syn. Avicennia Floridana, Rafinesque, Atlant. Jour. 148 
iii. 619. — Miquel, Linnea, xviii. 264. — A. Richard, F7. (1832). 
Cub. iii. 149. — Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. Ind. 502; Cat. Avicennia Meyeri, Miquel, Linnea, xviii. 262 (1844). 
Pl. Cub. 217. — Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. pt. i. 8341.— Avicennia oblongifolia, Chapman, F7. 310 (1865). — 
Lefroy, Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. No. 25, 97 (Bot. Ber- Vasey, Cat. Forest Trees, 19. 
A tree, in Florida occasionally sixty to seventy feet in height, with a short trunk rarely two feet in 
diameter, and spreading branches, which form a broad round-topped head; usually not more than 
twenty or thirty feet tall, with a short slender trunk, and toward the northern limit of its range reduced 
to a low shrub. The bark of the trunk varies from a quarter to a half of an inch in thickness, and is 
roughened with thin irregularly appressed scales which are dark brown tinged with red, and in falling 
display the bright orange-red inner bark. The branchlets, when they first appear, are slightly angled, 
and coated with fine hoary pubescence, which usually soon disappears, when they are light orange- 
color ; in their second year they are stout and terete, more or less contorted, light or dark gray, and 
conspicuously marked with the interpetiolar lines, and with the transverse semicircular leaf-scars, in 
which appear a central row of fibro-vascular bundle-scars. The leaves are oblong or lanceolate-elliptical, 
rounded or acute at the apex, gradually narrowed at the base, and entire, with slightly thickened and 
revolute margins; they are thick and coriaceous, dark green and often lustrous on the upper surface, 
canescent on the lower, two to three inches long, and three quarters of an inch to an inch and a half 
wide, with broad midribs, thickened and grooved toward the base on the upper side, and oblique 
primary veins arcuate and joined close to the margins, rounded and conspicuous on the two surfaces, 
and connected by prominent reticulate veinlets; they are borne on broad channeled petioles, enlarged 
at the base, and half an inch long, and, appearing irregularly, fall early in their second season. The 
flowers, which are produced continuously through the year, are borne in few-flowered short spikes, with 
stout angled canescent peduncles half an inch to an inch and a half in length, the lateral peduncles 
of the ternate terminal clusters being subtended by oblong acute bracts half an inch in length. The 
flowers begin to open at the base of the central terminal spike, and are closely invested with the bracts 
and bractlets, which are nearly a quarter of an inch long, coated with pale or slightly rufous pubescence, 
and about as long as the lobes of the calyx. The corolla is half an inch across the expanded lobes, 
which are slightly tomentose on both surfaces, and is nearly closed in the throat in which appear the 
four anthers and the end of the slender slightly lobed style. The fruit is an inch to an inch and a half 
long, and from three quarters of an inch to an inch broad; and in Florida is rarely developed. 
In the United States Avicennia nitida is found on the deltas of the Mississippi in Louisiana, and 
in Florida from St. Augustine to the southern keys on the east coast, and from Cedar Keys to Cape 
Sable on the west coast; it is common on many of the Antilles, and ranges southward to Brazil. The 
