NYCTAGINACES. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 111 
PISONIA OBTUSATA. 
Blolly. 
Fruit 10-ribbed, fleshy. Leaves opposite or alternate, obovate-oblong. 
Pisonia obtusata, Jacquin, Hort. Schenb. iii. 35, t. 314 Brasil. xiv. pt. ii. 361. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 
(1798). —Swartz, Fl. Ind. Occ. iii. 1960. — Sprengel, 10th Census U. S. ix. 117. — Hitchcock, Rep. Missouri 
Syst. ii. 168. — Dietrich, Syn. ii. 1226.— Choisy, De Bot. Gard. iv. 120. 
Candolle Prodr. xiii. pt. ii. 443. — A. Richard, Fl. Cub. Pisonia cuneifolia, Schlechtendal, Linnea, xxiii. 571 
iii. 170. — Chapman, FV. 374. — Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. (1850). 
Ind. 71; Cat. Pl. Cub. 24. — J. A. Schmidt, Martius Fl. 
A tree, in Florida thirty to fifty feet in height, with an erect or inclining trunk fifteen to twenty 
inches in diameter, and stout spreading branches which form a compact round-topped head; or usually 
much smaller. The bark of the trunk, which is rarely more than a sixteenth of an inch thick, is 
light red-brown and broken into thin appressed scales.’ The branchlets are slender and terete, and 
when they first appear are light orange-color; later they often produce numerous short spur-like 
lateral branches, and are light reddish brown or ashy gray, and marked with the large elevated 
semiorbicular or lunate leaf-scars. The leaves are opposite and sometimes alternate, obovate-oblong, 
rounded or occasionally emarginate at the apex, gradually narrowed at the base, and entire, with slightly 
thickened revolute undulate margins; they are an inch to an inch and a half long, half an inch 
broad, thick and firm, light green and glabrous, and paler on the lower than on the upper surface, 
with stout midribs slightly grooved on the upper side, obscure veins, and stout channeled petioles half 
an inch in length. The flowers appear in Florida in the autumn in terminal long-stalked open few- 
flowered panicled cymes with slender puberulous divergent branches, the ultimate divisions being two 
or three-flowered; they are perfect or unisexual, short-pedicellate, and greenish yellow, with minute 
acute bracts and bractlets. The calyx is funnel-shaped, divided nearly to the middle into five acute 
erect lobes conspicuously plaited in the bud and about half as long as the five to eight free stamens. 
The ovary is oblong-ovoid and gradually narrowed into a slender terminal style about as long as the 
calyx and crowned with a capitate lacerate stigma. The fruit, which ripens during the winter or in 
early spring, is clavate, prominently costate with ten rounded ribs, fleshy, smooth, bright red, and three 
quarters of an inch long; the utricle is terete, and light brown, with a thin membranous wall united 
with the thin coat of the seed which closely invests the large white embryo, with cotyledons rounded 
above and cordate at the base. 
In Florida Pisonia obtusata is common near sea-beaches and the shores of salt-water lagoons 
from Cape Canaveral to the southern islands, attaining its largest size in the United States on Elliott’s 
Key and Old Rhodes Key. It is common on many of the West Indian islands, and ranges southward 
to Brazil. 
The wood of Pisonia obtusata is heavy, rather soft, weak, coarse-grained, and contains numerous 
large open ducts, the layers of annual growth and medullary rays bemg hardly distinguishable ; it is 
yellow tinged with brown, with thick darker colored sapwood. The specific gravity of the absolutely 
dry wood is 0.6529, a cubic foot weighing 40.69 pounds. 
In Florida the Blolly’ was first noticed on Key West by Dr. J. L. Blodgett. 
1 For the derivation of the name Blolly, see i. 42. On the Florida Keys Pisonia obtusata is also called Pigeon Wood, Beef Wood, and 
Pork Wood. 
