22 HOUGH'S AMERICAN WOODS. 



full, broad or rounded top. The bark of trunk is of a brownish gray color, 

 rough with may friable and commonly rounded scales. 



HABITAT. The western slopes of the Alleghany Mountains, from western 

 Pennsylvania to northern Georgia, and westward throughout the great 

 Mississippi \ 7 alley to about central Nebraska and western Kansas, it is 

 rather local in its distribution, inhabiting the banks of streams and rich 

 bottom-lands, and, excepting in localities, is not an abundant tree. Its 

 former abundance in Ohio is evinced by one of the names by which it is 

 often known. 



PHYSICAL PROPERTIES. Wood light, soft, of very fine grain, satiny, 

 rather tough and easily worked, and of a buff-white color, both in the sap 

 and heart-wood, but the latter assuming a purple-brown color when about 

 to decay. Specific Gravity, 0.4542; Percentage of Ash, 0.86; Relative 

 Approximate Fuel Value, 0.4503 ; Coefficient of Elasticity, 64438 ; Modulus 

 of Rupture, 494; Resistance to Longitudinal Pressure:, 313; Resistance to 

 Indentation, 71 ; ^Y eight of a Cubic Foot in Pounds, 28.31. 



USES. A favorite wood for the manufacture of artificial limbs and 

 splints and certain kinds of wooden ware where lightness and toughness are 

 important qualities, and it is also used for paper pulp. 



MEDICINAL PROPERTIES. Said to be: very useful in congestions of the 

 portal circulation.* 



ORDER SAPINTXA.CEJE : SOAPBERRY FAMILY. 



Leaves alternate in the American representatives, petiolate, pinnately or palmately com- 

 pound, without stipules. Flowers regular or slightly irregular, polygamous, dioecious; 

 ealyx 4-5-lobed or divided, imbricated in the bud; petals 4-5, imbricated; disk annular, 

 fleshy; stamens usually 5-10 inserted on the disk; anthers introrse, 2-celled, longitudinally 

 dehiscent; ovary solitary, with 2-4 lobes and cells or entire; ovules 1 or 2 in each cell; 

 styles terminal. Fruit^a, drupe or capsule with small solitary seed and containing no 

 albumen. 



Trees, shrubs and a few vines with watery juice and chiefly confined to the tropics of 

 the Old World. Over a thousand species are known grouped in about twenty genera, Of 

 the arborescent genera four are represented in the United States, all southward. 



GENUS SAPINDUS, L. 



Leaves mostly pinnate, deciduous. Flowers small, with short pedicels, in ample racemes 

 or panicles; sepals 4-5, unequal: petals of same number and alternate with the sepals. 

 each usually with a scale at its base inside and inserted under the edge of the disk: 

 stamens 8-10 inserted on the disk, equal, usually with hairy filaments included in the 

 perfect flowers but much longer and exserted in the staminate flowers; anthers versatile: 

 ovary ascending and 3-celled with a single ovule in each cell ; style columnar, short, and 



*U. S. Dispensatory, 16th Ed., p. 1698. 



