MORACE^. 8ILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



85 



TOXYLON. 



Flowers dioecious ; calyx 4-lobed, the lobes imbricated in aestivation ; corolla ; 

 stamens 4, incurved before anthesis ; disk pulvinate, minute ; ovary superior, 1 -celled ; 

 ovule solitary, suspended. Fruits drupaceous, united into a globose syncarp. Leaves 

 alternate, entire, stipulate, deciduous. 



Toxylon (loxylon), Rafinesque, Am. Monthl. Mag. and 278. — Meisner, Gen. 351. — Baillon, ifis^. PZ. vi. 193. 



Crit. Rev. ii. 118 (1817) ; New Fl. iii. 42. 



Bentham & Hooker, Gen. iii. 363. — Engler, Engler & 



Madura, Nuttall, Gen. ii. 233 (1818). — Endlicher, Gen. Frantl PJlanzenf am. iii. ^t i. 17 4:. 



A tree, with thick milky slightly acrid juice^ thick deeply furrowed dark orange-colored hark, 

 stout tough terete flexible pale branches;, with thick orange-colored pith, marked with raised orange- 

 colored lenticels, often armed with stout straight axillary spines, short stout spur-like branchlets devel- 

 oped from lateral buds at the base of the spines, and thick fleshy flexible roots covered with bright 

 orange-colored bark exf ohating freely in long thin papery persistent scales. Buds ^ formed in summer, 

 depressed-globose, partly immersed in the bark, covered with a few closely imbricated ovate rounded 

 light chestnut-brown caducous scales, cihate on the margins. Leaves involute in vernation, ovate to 

 oblong-lanceolate, acuminate and apiculate at the apex, rounded, wedge-shaped or subcordate at the 

 base, entire, penniveined, the veins arcuate and united near the margins and connected by inconspicuous 

 reticulate veinlets, petiolate with elongated slender terete pubescent petioles obscurely grooved on the 

 upper side, at first pubescent on the upper surface, and coated on the lower with soft white tomentum, 

 at maturity glabrous, or pubescent on the under surface of the prominent midribs and veins, thick and 

 firm, dark green and very lustrous above, paler and dull below, deciduous, marking the branchlets in 

 falling with large pale elevated concave leaf-scars displaying a central ring of small fibro-vascular bundle 

 scars ; stipules lateral, nearly triangular, minute, coated with pale tomentum, caducous. Flowers hght 

 green, minute, appearing in early summer, the staminate long-pedicellate in short or ultimately elongated 

 racemes borne on long slender drooping peduncles developed from the axils of crowded leaves on the 

 spur-like branchlets of the previous year, the pistillate sessile in dense globose many-flowered heads on 

 short stout peduncles axiUary on shoots of the year. Calyx of the staminate flower ovate, gradually 

 narrowed into the slender pubescent pedicel, coated on the outer surface with pale hairs, divided to the 

 middle into four equal acute boat-shaped lobes. Stamens four, inserted opposite the lobes of the calyx 

 on the margin of a minute thin pulvinate disk j wanting in the pistillate flower ; filaments flattened, 

 light green, glabrous, infolded above the middle in the bud, with the anthers inverted and back to 

 back, straightening abruptly in anthesis, exserted ; anthers oblong, attached on the back near the 

 middle, introrse, two-celled, the cells attached laterally to a minute oblong or semiorbicular connective, 

 free and spreading above and below, opening by longitudinal lateral slits. Calyx of the pistillate flower 

 ovate, divided to the base into four oblong thick concave lobes, rounded, thickened and covered with 

 pale hairs at the apex, longer than the ovary and closely investing it, the two outer lobes much broader 

 than the others, accrescent, persistent, and inclosing the fruit. Ovary ovate, compressed, sessile, green 

 and glabrous, crowned by a long slender filiform style covered with white stigmatic hairs ; wanting in 



1 Toxylon does not form a terminal bud, the end of the branch branch then remaining rough and thickened during several years 



withering and falling oflf before midsummer ; the following spring by the persistent crowded scars left by the leaves of the branchlet. 



it is prolonged by an upper axillary bud or often by an axillary (Foerste, Bull. Torrey Bot. Cluby xx. 163, t. 147, f. 1.) 

 bud on one of the last lateral spur-like branchlets, the base of the 



