LEiTNERiACE^. SILVA OF NORTE AMERICA. 



109 



LEITNERIA. 



Flowers amentaceous, dioecious ; perianth of the staminate flower ; stamens 3 to 

 12 ; perianth of the pistillate flower minute ; ovary 1-celled ; ovule solitary, ascending. 

 Fruit an oblong compressed drupe. Leaves alternate, entire, petiolate, destitute of 

 stipules, deciduous. 



Leitneria, Chapman, Fl. 427 (I860), — Baillon, Hist. PL Engler, Engler & Prantl Pflanzenfam. iii* pt. i. 29, £ 



vi. 239, f. 214-216. — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. iii. 397.— 22. 



A shrub or tree^ with pale slightly fissured bark, scaly buds, stout terete pithy branchlets marked 

 with pale conspicuous elevated nearly circular lenticels and with elevated crescent-shaped obliquely 

 angled or sometimes obscurely three-lobed leaf-scars displaying the ends of three conspicuous fibro- 

 vascular bundle-scars, and thick fleshy stoloniferous yellow roots spreading horizontally near the surface 

 of the ground. Terminal buds broad, conical, an eighth of an inch long, covered by ten or twelve 

 oblong triangular closely imbricated scales coated with pale tomentum, often persistent during one or 

 two years at the base of the branch, and in falhng marking it with narrow ring-like scars ; lateral leaf- 

 buds smaller, ovoid, flattened by the pressure of the stem. Leaves involute in vernation, lanceolate to 

 ellipticaHanceolate, acuminate or acute and short-pointed at the apex^ gradually narrowed at the base, 

 entire, with sHghtly thickened revolute undulate margins, penniveined, with remote primary veins 

 arcuate and united near the margins, and connected by conspicuous reticulate veinlets, long-petiolate, 

 the stout petioles grooved on the upper side ; as they unfold coated on the lower surface and on the 

 petioles with thick pale tomentum, and puberulous on the upper surface ; at maturity thick and firm, 

 bright green and lustrous above, pale and coated below and on the broad midribs and veins with 

 villous pubescence, deciduous. Flowers amentaceous, expanding in early spring with the first unfolding 

 of the leaves from inflorescence-buds developed the previous autumn in the axils of leaves of the year 

 and covered with many imbricated ovate acute concave chestnut-brown scales coated on the outer surface 

 with pale hairs, the lowest often persistent after anthesis. Sterile aments clustered near the ends of the 

 branches, frequently excurved at maturity, composed of numerous ovate acute concave bracts, inserted 

 on a stout pubescent rachis and bearing on their torus-like stalks a ring of three to twelve stamens ; 

 filaments slender, somewhat dilated at the base, incurved; anthers oblong, slightly emarginate, attached 



the back below the middle, bright yellow, introrse, two-celled, the cell 



tudinally 



pollen grains glabrous, slightly three to four-grooved. Pistillate aments scattered, shorter and more 

 slender than those of the staminate plant, composed of imbricated ovate acute concave bracts, bearing 

 in their axils a short-stalked pistil surrounded by a rudimentary perianth of small gland-fringed scales, 

 the two largest lateral, the others next the axis of the inflorescence. Ovary one-celled, ovoid, pubes- 

 cent, crowned with an elongated flattened style, inserted obliquely, curving above the middle outward 

 in anthesis, grooved and stigmatic on the outer face; ovule soHtary, attached laterally to a placenta 

 facino- the bract, ascending, semianatropous, the micropyle directed upward. Fruit ovate, thick and 

 rounded on the ventral, narrowed on the dorsal edge, rounded at the base, compressed and pointed at 

 the apex, marked by the pale oblique scar left by the falling of the deciduous style, chestnut-brown, 

 ruo'ose ; exocarp thick and dry, closely investing the thin-walled Hght brown crustaceous rugose nutlet. 



o 



