266. BROUSSON ETIA PAPYBIFEBA PAPER MULBERRY. 39 



HABITAT. -- The native home of the Paper Mulberry is eastern Asia and 

 adjacent islands. It was introduced into this country as an ornamental 

 shade tree, and has become naturalized in the Southern States and as far 

 north along the Atlantic coast at least as the vicinity of New York city. 



PHYSICAL PROPERTIES. Wood rather soft, light and coarse-grained, 

 with obscure, short medullary rays and annual rings indicated by numerous 

 large open ducts. It is of a rich pinkish brown color with yellowish white 

 sap-wood. 



USES. --The wood is not at present of commercial importance in this 

 country. In the Orient the inner bark of the tree is extensively used in 

 paper-making. Tappa cloth, extensively used by the natives of the South 

 Pacific islands, is made from the inner bark by maceration and pounding 

 to remove the non-fibrous portion. 



ORDER JUGLANDACE-ffi : WALNUT FAMILY. 



Leaves alternate, pinnate and without stipules. Flowers monoecious and apetalous, 

 except in some cases in the fertile flowers. Sterile flowers in catkins with an irregular 

 calyx adnate to the scale of the catkin. Fertile flowers solitary or in small clusters, with 

 calyx regularly 3-5-lobed, adherent to the incompletely 2-4-celled, but 1-ovuled ovary. 

 Fruit a sort of dry drupe (a tryma), with a fibrous and more or less fleshy and coriaceoug 

 outer coat (shuck) very astringent to the taste, a hard, bony inner coat (shell), and a 

 2-4-lobed seed, which is orthotropous, with thick, oily and often corrugated cotyledons and 

 no albumen. 



All representatives of the order are trees. 



GENUS HICORIA, RAF. 



Leaves odd-pinnate with few leaflets; leaf-buds scaly and from them appear generally 

 both kinds of flowers, the fertile at the extremity of the growth and the sterile at the base, 

 the leaves between. (In one or two species, subgenus Pecania, the staminate catkins 

 appear in lateral fascicles at the summit of the shoots of the preceding year.) Sterile 

 flowers in slender, imbricated, mostly forked catkins: scales 3 parted; calyx mostly 

 3-parted ; stamens 3-10, free, filaments short or wanting and anthers hairy. Fertile 

 flowers clustered 2-5 together, their common peduncle terminating the shoot of the season : 

 calyx 4-cleft, superior; petals none; stigmas sessile, 2-lobed, the lobes bifid, papillose, per- 

 sistent. -Fruit (October) with a coriaceous but at length dry and hard epicarp (shuck), 

 finally falling away in 4 more or less distinct valves, and a smoothish horny endocarp 

 (shell) with a 2-lobed nucleus. 



Trees with hard bark, very tough wood and continuous pith. 



Name is adapted from the North American Indian name. 



