30 



BILVA OF NORTH AMERICA, 



EUPHORBIACEiE. 



GYMNANTHES LUCIDA. 



Crab Wood. 



Perianth of the staminate flower ; stamens 2 or 3 ; ovary long-stalked. Leaves 



oblong-obovate to ovate-lanceolate. 



Gymnanthes lucida, Swartz, Proc?/*. 96 (1788). — Balllon, 

 Etude Gen. Euphorb. 530. — Mueller Arg., Linncea, 



Hitchcock, Rep. Missouri Bot. Gard. iv. 



xxxii. 



129. 



100. 



ExccBcaria lucida, Swartz, Fl. Ind. Occ. ii. 1122 (1800). 

 Willdenow, Spec. iv. 865. — Persoon, Syn. ii. 634. 



Poiret, Lam. Diet. Suppl. i. 155. — A. de Jussieu, 



Euphorb. Tent. t. 16, f. 55. — Nuttall, Sylva, ii. 60, t. 



61. 

 199. 



Dietrich, Syn. v. 256. — Richard, Fl. Cub. iii. 



Chapman, Fl. 405. — Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. 



Bid. 50 ; Cat. PL Cub. 20. — Eggers, Vidensk. Medd. 



fra nat. For. Kjobenh. 1876, 145 {Fl. St. Croix). 



Sebastiania lucida, Mueller Arg., De Candolle Prodr. xv. 



pt. ii. 1181 (1866). —Eggers, Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. No. 



13, 92 {Fl. St. Croix and the Virgin Islands). 

 gent, Forest Trees N. Am. Idth Census U. S. ix. 121. 



Sar- 



A ti-ee, occasionally twenty to thirty feet in height, with a trunk six or eight inches in diameter 

 d often irregularly ridged, the rounded ridges spreading near the surface of the ground into broad 



buttresses, and with slender erect branches which form a narrow loose oblong head 



The bark of the 



trunk is dark red-brown and a sixteenth of an inch thick, and separates into large thin scales, which, in 

 falling, display the light brown inner bark. The branchlets are terete and slender, and, when they first 

 appear, are Hght green and more or less deeply shaded with red ; in their first winter they are light 

 gray-brown faintly tinged with red and roughened by numerous oblong pale lenticels; ultimately they 

 become ashy gray, and are marked at the end of their second year with semiorbicular elevated leaf- 

 scars in which appear four fibro-vascular bundle-scars superposed in pairs. The leaf-buds are ovate, 



obtuse, covered with chestnut-brown scales, and about one sixteenth of an inch in length. 



The leaves 



are condupHcate in vernation, oblong-obovate to ovate-lanceolate, and obscurely and remotely crenulate- 

 serrate or often entire ; when they unfold they are thin and membranaceous, deeply tinged with red, and 

 furnished on the teeth with minute caducous dark glands, and at maturity they are thick and coriaceous, 

 dark green and lustrous on the upper, and pale and dull on the lower surface, two to three inches long, 

 and two thirds of an inch to an inch and a half wide, with broad pale midribs raised and rounded on 

 the upper side, obscure primary veins arcuate and united near the margins, and connected by prominent 

 coarsely reticulate veinlets, and broad sKghtly grooved petioles about a quarter of an inch in length ; in 

 Florida they appear in early spring, and, remaining on the branches through their second summer, fall 

 gradually. The stipules, which disappear as soon as the leaves unfold, are ovate, acute, membranaceous, 

 Hght brown, clothed on the margins with long pale hairs, and nearly a sixteenth of an inch in length. 

 The inflorescence-buds appear in Florida late in the autumn in the axils of leaves of the year, and 

 during the winter are an eighth of an inch long, and covered with closely imbricated scales ; in the early 

 spring they begin to lengthen, and when fuUy grown the inflorescence is an inch and a haK to two 

 inches long, and consists of a slender glabrous angled rachis, which, in lengthening, has separated the 

 scales. From two or three of the lower scales the long-stalked solitary female flowers are produced, and 

 from between the remainder the stamens of the usually triandrous male flowers protrude. The scales 

 are broadly ovate, pointed, concave, rounded and thickened at the apex, puberulous and ciliate on the 

 margins ; those which inclose the male flowers are connate with their peduncles, and as these lengthen are 

 carried upward, and thus remain immediately under the pedicels of the fuUy expanded flowers, while 

 those subtending the female flowers at the base of the inflorescence are not raised on their peduncles. 

 The male inflorescence consists of a peduncle terminating in three divisions, each of these divisions or 



