MORACE^. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



95 



FIOUS AUREA. 



Receptacles subglobose, sessile, or short-pedunculate. Leaves oblong-lanceolate, 

 usually pointed at both ends. 



Picus aurea, Nuttall, Sylva, ii. 4, t. 43 (1849). — Chap- Ficus aurea, var. latifolia, Nuttall, Sijlva, ii. 4 (1849). 

 man, FL 415. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Cen- 

 sus JJ. S. ix. 126, 



A round broad-topped parasitic tree, fifty or sixty feet in height, germinating and growing at first 

 on the trunks or branches of other trees, and sending down to the ground stout aerial roots, which, 



gradually growing together and strangling its host, form a trunk often three or four feet in diameter, 

 while other roots produced from the branches fix themselves in the ground, grow into trunks, and 

 extend the tree over a large area. The bark of the trunk is half an inch thick, smooth, ashy gray, or 

 light brown slightly tinged with orange, and broken on the surface into minute appressed scales which, 

 in falling, disclose the nearly black inner bark. The branchlets are stout, terete, pithy, light orange- 

 colored, and marked with pale lenticels, conspicuous stipular scars, large slightly elevated horizontal 

 oval leaf -scars in which appear a marginal ring of large pale fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and smaller 

 elevated concave circular scars left by the receptacles in falling. The leaves are involute in vernation, 

 oblong, usually narrowed at both ends, acute, or acuminate with short broad points at the apex, wedge- 

 shaped or rarely broad and rounded at the base, two to five inches long, an inch and a half to three 

 inches wide, thick and coriaceous, dark yellow-green and lustrous above, and paler and rather less 

 lustrous below, with broad light yellow midribs slightly grooved on the upper side, and numerous 

 obscure primary veins arcuate and united near the margins and connected by fine closely reticulated 

 veinlets ; they are borne on stout slightly grooved petioles, half an inch to an inch in length, and, 

 continuing to unfold during a large part of the year, usually fall during their second season. The 

 stipules, which are ovate-lanceolate, thick and firm, tinged with red, and about an inch long, inclose the 

 leaf in a slender sharp-pointed bud-hke covering. The receptacles, which develop in succession as the 

 branch lengthens, are axillary, subglobose, sessile, or short-pedunculate, and solitary or often in pairs, 

 with a lateral orifice marked by a small point formed by the union of the minute bracts with which it is 

 closed 5 when they first appear they are partly inclosed by a thin broadly ovate membranaceous light 

 brown hood-like caducous posterior bract, and are furnished at the base with three ovate rounded 

 persistent anterior bracts, the central one being outside the others, and rather smaller j when they are 

 fully grown, they are about one third of an inch in diameter, and yellow, but ultimately turn bright 

 red. The flowers are reddish purple, separated by minute reddish chaff-like scales, more or less 

 laciniate at the apex, and are sessile or long-pedicellate. The calyx of the staminate flower is divided 

 to below the middle into two or three broad lobes rather shorter than the stout flattened filament. The 

 lobes of the anther are oblong, and attached laterally to the broad connective. The calyx of the pistil- 

 late flower is divided to the middle into four or five narrow lobes, and closely invests the ovate sessile 

 ovary surmounted by a slender lateral clavate style two-lipped at the apex. The fruit is ovate, inclosed 

 at the base by the persistent calyx, crowned with the remnants of the style, and immersed in the 

 thickened reddish-purple walls of the receptacle ; it has a thin fleshy outer covering and a thick-walled 

 lio-ht brown crustaceous nutlet. The seed is ovate and rounded at both ends, with a thin light brown 

 testa, and a large lateral oblong pale hilimi. 



Ficus aurea is a common inhabitant of woody hummocks on the shores and islands of southern 

 Florida, where it is distributed from the Indian Eiver on the east coast and from the shores and islands 



