EUPHORBIACE^. 



SILVA OF NOBTH AMERICA. 



27 



DRYPETES LATERIFLORA. 



Guiana Plum. 



Calyx 4-lobed ; stamens 4 ; ovary 2-celled. Fruit subglobose ; exocarp thin 

 taceous ; nutlet thin-walled. 



Drypetes lateriflora, Urban, Bot. Jahrh. xv. 357 (1893). Drypetes sessiliflora, Baillon, Etude Gen. Euphorh. Atlas, 



Schaefferia lateriflora, Swartz, Prodr. 30 (1788) ; FL Ind. 

 Occ. I 329. 



Koelera laurifolia, Willdenow, S^ec. iv. pt. i. 750 (in part) 



(1805). 

 Bessera spinosa, Sprengel, Piigill. ii. 91 (1815). 

 Drypetes crocea, Poiteau, Mem. Mus. i. 159, t. 8 (1815). 



Nuttall, Sylva^ ii. 66, t 63. — Chapman, FL 410. 



Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. Ind. 32 ; Cat. PL Cub. 15. 



Mueller Arg., De CandoUe Prodr. xv. pt. ii. 455. 



Sar- 



gent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 120. 



Limacia 



Nachtr. iv. 334 (1818). 



45, t. 24, f. 34-36, 38, 40 (1858). 



Drypetes glauca, A. Richard, FL Cub. iii. 218 (not Vahl) 

 (1855). — Grisebach, Mem. Am. Acad. n. ser. viii. 157 

 {PL Wright.) ; Nachr. KgL GeselL Gott. 1865, 165 ; 

 Cat PL Cub. 15. 



Drypetes alba, var. latifolia, Grisebach, Nachr. KgL Ge- 

 selL Gott. 1865, 165 ; Cat. PL Cub. 15. 



Drypetes crocea, fi longipes, Mueller Arg., De CandoUe 

 Prodr. XV- pt. ii. 456 (1866). 



Drypetes crocea, y latifolia, Mueller Arg., De CandoUe 

 Prodr. XV. pt. ii- 456 (1866). 



Drypetes latifolia, Sauvalle, i^^. Cub. 127 (1873). 



Roumea coriacea, Steudel, Norn. Bot. ed. 2, ii. 475 (not Xylosma nitidmn. Hooker f. & Jackson, Ind. Kew 



Poiteau) (1841). 



(not Grisebach) (1893). 



A tree^ twenty to thirty feet in height^ with a short trunk five or six inches in diameter, and 



slender erect branches 



The bark of the trunk is a sixteenth of an inch thick, and lig*ht brown tinged 



to 



with red^ the generally smooth surface separating into small irregular 

 and slender, and when they first appear are Hght 



green tinged with red 



The branchlets are te 

 their first winter they 



ashy gray and are marked with scattered pale lenticels, and at the end of their second year with the 

 small elevated oval leaf-scars which display the ends of three fibro-vascular bundles. The buds are 



minute, acute or obtuse, chestnut-brown, and coated with pale ha 



The 



oblong 



or 



acuminate at the apex, gradually narrowed at the base, and entire ; when they unfold they are thin and 

 covered with scattered pale hairs, and at maturity are thick and subcoriaceous, dark green and lustrous, 

 three to four inches in length, and haL£ an inch to an inch and a half in breadth, with conspicuous 

 light-colored midribs rounded above and below, and obscure primary veins arcuate and united near the 

 sHghtly thickened revolute margins and connected by slender reticulated veinlets ; they are borne on 

 slender grooved petioles a quarter of an inch long, and appear in Florida in the early spring, falling 

 during their second year. The flowers open late in the autumn or early in the winter, on branches one 



or two years old, in the axils of leaves or from leafless nodes, in many or few-flowered clusters on 

 pedicels shorter than the petioles. The calyx is greenish white, hirsute on the outer surface, divided 

 to the base into four ovate rounded lobes, and persistent under the fruit ; in the male flower, in which 

 there is no trace of an ovary, there are four stamens inserted under the margin and between the lobes 

 of the flat tomentose disk, with slender exserted filaments and introrse emarginate pilose anthers. In 



the female flower the ovate tomentose 



celled ovary 



Liounted by two nearly sessile obHque spreading cushion-like stigmas 



on a broad shghtly lobed disk, and is 



The fruit, which ripens 



during the spring 



and 



ly summer, is subglobose, a third of an inch in diameter, tipped with 



conspicuous blackened remnants 



of 



& 



dark brown and coated with soft pubesc 



it is 



solitary or produced in clusters of two or three, and is borne on stout stalks enlarged at the apex and 

 a quarter of an inch in leng 



th, from which 



sparates 



fallinsr ; the flesh is thin and 



