MYRICACER, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 91 
MYRICA INODORA. 
Wax Myrtle. 
LEAVES usually broadly oblong-obovate, rounded or rarely acute at the apex, entire, 
coriaceous, dark green and lustrous. 
Myrica inodora, W. Bartram, Travels, 405 (1791).— Myrica obovata, C. de Candolle, Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 150 
Chapman, Fl. 427. (1864). 
Cerophora inodora, Rafinesque, Alsograph. Am. 11 (1838). ?Myrica Laureola, C. de Candolle, Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 154 
(1864). 
Usually a shrub, with numerous slender stems springing from the ground, Myrica inodora 
occasionally assumes the habit of a tree and attains the height of eighteen or twenty feet, forming a 
straight trunk six or eight feet tall, two or three inches in diameter, and covered with close thin smooth 
and nearly white bark. The branchlets are stout and roughened with small scattered lenticels, and at 
first are coated with dense pale tomentum which soon begins to disappear, and during their first 
summer and autumn they are bright red-brown and glabrous or scurfy, or often light brown, and 
sometimes slightly puberulous. The leaf-buds are ovate, acute, and nearly an eighth of an inch long, 
and are covered by many loosely imbricated lanceolate acute red-brown scurfy pubescent scales, those 
of the inner ranks often remaining on the young branch until it has finished the growth of the year. 
The leaves are broadly oblong-obovate or rarely ovate, rounded or sometimes pointed and occasionally 
apiculate at the apex, narrowed at the base, decurrent on the short stout petioles, and entire or rarely 
obscurely toothed toward the apex; when they unfold they are covered with pale glands, and when 
fully grown are thick and coriaceous, glandular-punctate, dark green and very lustrous above, bright 
green below, from two to four inches long and from three quarters of an inch to an inch and a half 
wide, with broad conspicuously glandular midribs often slightly puberulous on the lower side, and few 
remote slender obscure primary veins forked and arcuate near the much thickened and revolute 
margins; they have no resinous odor, and, beginning to fall in May, disappear from the branches 
before midsummer. The flower-buds are oblong or subglobose, about an eighth of an inch long, and 
covered with rather loosely imbricated ovate acute apiculate chestnut-brown scales. The flowers, which 
are usually ebracteolate, open in April or May and are borne in simple oblong catkins with ovate acute 
glandular scales, the staminate being from three quarters of an inch to an inch in length and about as 
long as the slender-stemmed elongated pistillate aments, which lengthen with the growing fruit and 
are often two inches long when it is ripe. The stamens are composed of oblong slightly emarginate 
yellow anthers and short filaments united at the base. The pistillate flowers, which are usually in 
pairs, consist of ovate glabrous ovaries terminating in slender bright red styles. The fruit, which is 
produced very sparingly,’ is oblong, from one third to nearly one half of an inch long, papillose, black, 
and covered with a thin coat of white wax; the shell of the nut is thick and bony. The seed is oblong- 
oval, gradually narrowed and acute at the apex, rounded at the base, and an eighth of an inch in 
length, with a bright orange-brown testa and a conspicuous light yellow hilum. 
Myrica inodora mhabits deep swamps; and has been found only near Appalachicola, Florida, 
1 The only mature fruit of this plant which I have seen is from and preserved in the herbarium of the Royal Gardens at Kew, for 
a specimen collected by Drummond near Appalachicola in 1835 which I am indebted to the director of that establishment. 
