Crabwood 



599 



gin, dark green and shining, with the midrib prominent above, pale, glaucous 

 and reticulated beneath; leaf-stalk short, grooved above, yellowish. The flowers 

 appear in early spring in the axils of the leaves of the previous season. The 

 staminate are in many-flowered clusters, on pedicels shorter than the leaf-stalk: 

 calyx yellowish, lobed, oblong or oval, blunt and smooth; stamens 8, filaments 

 unequal; anthers nearly as broad as long, hairy. The pistillate flowers are usually 

 sohtary, the ovary hairy, i-celled; stigma broad, almost sessile. The fruit is an 

 oblong or ovoid drupe 2 to 2.5 cm. long, bright white, very conspicuous among 

 the dark green leaves; flesh thick and pulpy, stone obovoid, much narrowed at the 

 base; the seed is oblong, rounded at each end, 10 mm. long, hght brown and 

 marked by conspicuous radiating veins. 



The wood is hard, weak, brittle, dense, and brown; its specific gravity is about 

 0,93. Leaves of seedlings and of shoots from cut stumps are coarsely toothed 

 with bristle-tipped teeth. It is called Whitewood in the Bahamas. 



II. CRABWOOD 



GENUS GYMNANTHES SWARTZ 

 Species Gymnanthes lucida Swartz 



3LSO called Poison wood, this is a small milky-sapped evergreen tree or 

 shrub of peninsular Florida and the Keys, also in the Bahamas and 

 other West Indies generally; its maximum height is 10 meters, with 

 a trunk diameter of 2 dm. 

 The ridged trunk is slender, sometimes much enlarged at the base. The 

 branches are slender, erect 



or ascending, 

 about I . s 



The bark is 

 mm. thick. 



smooth or somewhat scaly 

 and dark brown. The 

 twigs are slender, round, 

 light green, becoming gray. 

 The leaves are alternate, 

 thick, obovate to oblong- 

 spatulate or nearly oblong, 

 5 to 10 cm. long, blunt- 

 pointed, tapering at the 

 base, entire or wavy on the 

 margin, becoming dark 

 green, smooth and shining 

 above, pale, dull and 

 prominently veined be- 



FiG. 551. Crabwood. 



neath; the petiole is shghtly grooved, 5 to 20 mm. long, the stipules small, falling 

 early. The small green flowers are monoecious, the staminate in slender axillary 



