Sweet Gum 



413 



smooth, light brown, marked by broadly triangular leaf scars, and fmally dark 

 gray; the winter buds are scarcely i cm. long, sharp pointed, and covered by 

 shining red-brown scales; the leaves are thick and firm, almost orbicular in outline, 

 about 15 cm. across, deeply palmately cleft into 5, rarely 7, sharp-pointed, wedge- 

 shaped, glandular-toothed lobes, bright green, smooth and shining above, paler 

 beneath, the base usually heart-shaped ; the leaf-stalk is about as long as the blade 

 and slender; tlie stipules are small. The flowers, which appear when the leaves 

 are about half-grown, are of two kinds; the staminate are borne in terminal up- 



FiG. 362. Sweet Gum, New York Botanical Garden. 



right racemes 5 to 8 cm. long, consisting of several greenish globose clusters of 

 many stamens commingled with elongated scales and subtended by an involucre of 

 4 deciduous bracts; the pistillate flowers are borne on slender drooping peduncles 

 2.5 to 5 cm. long, at the axils of the terminal leaves, in globular heads about 1.5 

 cm. in diameter, with a small involucre, and consist of many accrescent receptacles 

 supporting 4 rudimentan.- anthers, and a partly inferior, 2-carpeled, i -celled ovary 

 with 2 stout incun^ed styles, with inner stigmatic surfaces. The fruit, which is 

 persistent throughout the winter, is a spiny, globose, cone-like mass, 3 to 4 cm. in 

 diameter, of a light brown color when ripe, becoming red-brown during the winter; 



