LAURACE^. 8ILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



19 



UMBELLULAEIA. 



Flowers perfect ; calyx 6-lobed, the lobes in two series, imbricated in aestivation, 

 deciduous ; corolla ; stamens 12, in four series, those of the inner series sterile ; 

 disk ; ovary superior, 1-celled ; ovule solitary, suspended. Fruit baccate. Leaves 

 alternate, destitute of stipules, persistent. 



Umbellularia, Nuttall, Sylva, i. 87 (1842). — Bentham & Oreodaphne, Subgen. Umbellularia, C. G. Nees ab Esen- 

 Hooker, Gen. iii. 162. — Pax, Engler & Prantl PfiaVf beck, Syst. Laur. 462 (1836). — Endlicher, Gen. 321. 



zenfam. iii. pt. ii. 116. 



Drimophyllmn, Nuttall, Sijlva, i. 85 (1842). 



An aromatic tree, with dark brown scaly bark, slender terete branches marked in their second and 

 third years by small semicircular or nearly triangular elevated leaf -scars displaying a horizontal row of 

 minute fibro-vascular bundle-scars, naked buds, and thick fleshy brown roots. Leaves alternate, involute 

 in vernation, lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, acute or rounded at the narrow apex, cuneate or some- 

 what rounded at the base, entire, with thickened slightly revolute margins, petiolate, the broad petioles 

 grooved on the upper side, pungent ; at first coated on the lower surface with pale soft pubescence and 

 puberulous on the upper surface, at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, 

 dull and paler below, with slender light yellow midribs rounded on both sides, penniveined, the veins 

 remote, obscure, arcuate and more or less united near the margins, connected by conspicuous reticulate 

 veinlets. Flowers in axUlary pedunculate many-flowered umbels inclosed before anthesis by an invo- 

 lucre of five or six imbricated broadly ovate or obovate pointed concave yellow puberulous caducous 

 scales, the latest umbels subsessile, at the base of terminal leaf-buds. Pedicels slender, puberulous, ebrac- 

 teolate, developed from the axils of obovate membranaceous puberulous deciduous bracts decreasing in 

 size from the outer to the inner. Perianth divided almost to the base into six nearly equal broadly 

 obovate rounded pale yellow lobes spreading and reflexed after anthesis. Stamens inserted on the short 

 slightly thickened tube of the calyx ; filaments flat, glabrous, pale yellow, rather shorter than the 

 anthers, those of the third series furnished near the base with two conspicuous stipitate orange-colored 

 orbicular flattened glands ; anthers innate, oblong, flattened, light yellow, four-celled, those of the first 

 and second series introrse, those of the third series extrorse, the cells superposed in pairs opening from 

 below upward by persistent Hds ; stamens of the fourth series reduced to minute ovate acute yellow 

 staminodia. Ovary sessile, ovate, often more or less gibbous, glabrous, abruptly contracted into a stout 

 columnar style rather shorter than the lobes of the calyx and crowned with a simple capitate discoid 

 stio-ma; ovule solitary, suspended from the apex of the cell, anatropous. Fruit ovate, one-seeded, 

 surrounded at the base by the enlarged and thickened truncate or lobed tube of the calyx, yellow-green, 

 sometimes more or less tinged with dull red ; pericarp thin and fleshy. Seed ovate, exalbuminous, light 



brown: testa separabl 



the outer thick, hard, and woody, the inner thin and papery 



closely investing the embryo, chestnut-brown, very lustrous on the inner surface. Embryo erect, filKng 

 the cavity of the seed ; cotyledons thick and fleshy, inclosing the minute superior thick and fleshy 

 conical radicle turned toward the hilum. 



The wood of Umbellularia is heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, and susceptible of receivin 



& 



beautiful polish ; it contains numerous smaU regularly distributed open ducts and many thin medullary 

 rays and is lio"ht rich brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood composed of thirty to forty layers of 

 annual o-rowth. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.6517, a cubic foot weighing 40.61 

 pounds. The most valuable wood produced in the forests of Pacific North America for the interior 



