EUPHORBiACE^. 8ILVA OF NORTE AMERICA. 



33 



HIPPOMANE. 



Flowers monoecious; calyx usually 3-lobed, the lobes imbricated in aestivation; 

 corolla ; stamens 2 to 3, their filaments connate ; disk ; ovary superior, 6 to 

 9-celled ; ovule solitary in each cell. Fruit drupaceous. Leaves alternate, stipulate, 

 tardily deciduous. 



Hippomane, Linnaeus, Gen. 368 (1737). — A. L. de Jussieu, 228. — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. iii. 333. — Pax, En^ 



Gen. 391. — Endlicher, Gen. 1110. — Meisner, Gen. lev & Prantl Pfianzenfam. iii. pt. v. 98. 



337. — BaiUon, Etude Gen. Ewpliorb. 539 ; Bi&t. PL v. MancaniUa, Adanson, Fam. PL ii. 354 (1763). 



Majicinella, Tussac, FL AntilL iii. 21 (1824). 



A glabrous tree, with thick milky acrid juice, scaly bark, and stout pithy branchlets marked with 

 circular raised lenticels and oblong or semiorbicular horizontal elevated leaf -scars in which appear a row 

 of obscure fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and nearly encircled at the nodes by ring-Hke scars left by the 

 falling of the stipules. Buds ovate, acute, covered by many loosely imbricated long-pointed chestnut- 

 brown scales. Leaves involute in vernation, broadly ovate, abruptly rounded at the apex into broad 

 points terminating in slender mucros, rounded or subcordate at the base, remotely crenulate-serrate 

 with minute gland-tipped teeth, penniveined, long-petiolate, pilose at first with occasional long pale 

 hairs, soon becoming glabrous, and at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark yellow-green and lustrous 

 above, paler and dull below ; midribs stout, Hght yellow, raised and rounded on the upper side ; primary 

 veins slender, remote, arcuate and united at some distance from the margin, connected by conspicuous 

 coarsely reticulated veinlets more prominent on the upper than on the lower side ; petioles elongated, 

 slender, rigid, light yellow, rounded below, obscurely grooved above, marked at the very apex with large 

 orbicular dark red glands; stipules ovate-lanceolate, abruptly narrowed from a broad base, slightly 

 laciniate near the apex, membranaceous, light chestnut-brown, caducous. Inflorescence terminal, 

 spicate, appearing in early spring usually before the unfolding of leaves of the year, the stout fleshy 

 rachis often furnished at the base with acute sterile deciduous bracts or with one or two small leaves, 

 the two or three minute pistillate flowers soKtary in the axils of these leaves and in those of ovate acute 

 lanceolate bracts, furnished with two lateral glandular bractlets, raised on thickened lobes of the rachis ; 

 staminate flowers minute, articulate on slender pedicels, clustered in eight to fifteen-flowered fascicles 

 in the axils of similar bracts higher on the rachis than those subtending the pistillate flowers and 

 extending to its apex. Calyx of the staminate flower yellow-green, membranaceous, divided below the 



middle 



sometimes into two acute lobes. Stamens two or often three, exserted, more 



less connate by their filaments into a stout column, free and spreading from the apex ; anthers ovoid, 

 light yellow, surmounted by the short prolongation of the connective, attached on the back below the 

 middle, erect, extrorse, two-celled, the cells opening longitudinally. Calyx of the pistiUate flower ovate, 

 yellow-ffreen, divided nearly to the base into three ovate acute concave divisions rounded on the back. 

 Ovary six to eight-celled, narrowed at the base and gradually contracted above into a short simple 

 cylindrical style separating into six to eight long radiating flattened abruptly reflexed styles stigmatic 

 on the inner face. Ovule solitary in each cell, suspended from its inner angle, descending, anatropous ; 

 raphe ventral ; micropyle extrorse, superior. Fruit pome-shaped, obscurely six to eight-lobed, raised on 

 a thickened woody stem ; epicarp thin, light yeUow-green or yellow and red ; mesocarp thick, lactes- 

 cent adherent to the thick-walled rugose deeply and irregularly winged six to eight-ceUed subglobose 



endocarp flattened at the two ends, the ceUs separated throughout by thin dark radial plates 



