32 HOUGH'S AMERICAN WOODS. 



HABITAT. From North Carolina southward along the coast to middle 

 Florida and westward into Texas, growing in the moist soil of rich bot- 

 tom lands, the borders of streams, swamps and the pine-barren ponds. 



PHYSICAL PROPERTIES. Wood heavy, hard, rather brittle, of very 

 close grain and susceptible of a very smooth polish. It is of a delicate 

 reddish-brown color, with buff-white sap-wood. Specific Gravity, 0.0784 ; 

 Percentage of Ash, 0.42; Relative Approximate Fuel Value, 0.6756; Co- 

 efficient of Elasticity, 48828; Modulus of Rupture, 314; Weight of a Cubic 

 Foot in Pounds, 43.28. 



USES. Little use is made of this wood, though its properties would 

 suggest a usefulness in turnery, as for tool-handles, etc. As an orna- 

 mental tree it is occasionally planted, but not as generally as its merits 

 would justify. 



MEDICINAL PROPERTIES. " The spongy bark produced at the base of 

 the trunk is pliable and absorbent and has been recommended as a styp- 

 tic; it is astringent, and said to have a cicatrizing effect on wounds." * 



GENUS CLIFTONIA, BANKS. 



Leaves oblong-lanceolate, entire, about 2 in. long, coriaceous, evergreen, terminat- 

 ing in a blunt or slightly emarginate apex, light-green above, paler and furnished 

 with glands beneath. Flowers appear in very early spring, in short terminal many- 

 flowered erect racemes, regular, perfect, delightfully fragrant, with slender pedicles 

 and each appearing in the axils of one or two pointed, membranous, bracts, which 

 fall away before the expansion of the flowers; calyx with 5-8 minute persistent lobes, 

 imbricated in aestivation; petals 5-8, hypogynous, spreading, obovate, concave, imbri- 

 cated in aestivation; stamens 10, hypogynous, in two ranks, those of the outer rank 

 being longer and are opposite the sepals, those of the inner alternate with the sepals; 

 filaments flat and wide at base, abruptly contracted above and subulate; anthers 

 introrse, with two cells opening by longitudinal slits; pistil with subsessile, 2-4-lobed 

 stigma and 2-4-celled ovary, which is surrounded at its base by a cup-like hypogyn- 

 ous disk; a single anatropous ovule being suspended from the apex of each cell. 

 Fruit oblong, achenium-like, considerably resembling a grain of Buckwheat,f 

 scarcely in. in length, 3-4-angular, with thin membranous wing-like margins 

 and crowned with the persistent stigma, with spongy pericarp and containing 2-4 

 cells, each with a single fusiform seed with thin embryo and fleshy albumen. 



(Genus named in compliment to Dr. Francis Clifton, an English physician.) 



108. CLIFTONIA LIGUSTRINA, BANKS.! 

 TITI, BUCKWHEAT TREE. 



Ger., Buckweizenbaum; Fr., Cliftonie a feuilles de Troene. 



SPECIFIC CHAKA.CTERS are incorporated in the above generic description as this is 

 the only species. 



(The specific name, ligustrina, is from ligustrum, the ancient Latin name of the 

 European Privet.) 



A small tree of upright habit of growth, rarely attaining the dimensions 

 of 40 ft. (12 m.) in hight and 15 in. (0.40 m.) in diameter of trunk at base, 



* Sargmits' Sttva of North America, II p. 2. 



w^? e T reSer H blan e f this frui ^ tothat of the Buckw heat is what gives the tree the name Buck. 

 wheat-Tree, though a name not in common usage. 

 ? Cliftonia monophylla, Britton. 



