Elliottia 



751 



I. ELLIOTTIA 



GENUS ELLIOTTIA MUHLENBERG 

 Species Elliottia racemosa Muhlenberg 



|LLIOTTL\ is one of the most local and rarest of trees, as it is known 

 only from a limited area in the sand hill country of southeastern 

 South Carolina and adjacent Georgia; its maximum height is 6 me- 

 ters, with a trunk diameter of about i dm., but it is mostly a shrub. 

 The tnmk is short, the branches upright and ascending. The bark is thin, 

 close, smooth and gray; the twigs are round, 

 slender, slightly hairy, reddish brown, becoming 

 smooth, and dark brown. The terminal winter 

 buds are about 6 mm. long, ovoid, sharp-pointed 

 and covered by shining brown scales; the lateral 

 buds are smaller. The leaves are rather firm in 

 texture, oblong, eUiptic or oblong-oblanceolate, 6 

 to 15 cm. long, tapering toward each end, minutely 

 tipped, entire-rnargined, dark green, smooth and 

 shining above, paler, somewhat glaucous and 

 softly hairy along the yellowish veins beneath; the 

 leaf-stalk is slender, and softly hair}', i to 4 cm. 

 long. The flowers appear in June and July, in 

 loose narrow panicles i to 4 dm. long, on slender 

 pedicels i to 2 cm. long. The calyx is 3 to 3.5 

 mm. broad, with 4 broadly ovate, pointed, irreg- 

 ularly toothed lobes; corolla 12 to 15 mm. long, 

 the petals 4, linear-oblong, white, more or less re- 

 curved ; stamens 8, about 8 mm. long, their fila- 

 ments flattened; anthers arrow-shaped, opening lengthwise; ovary sessile, 4-celled, 

 borne on a fleshy disk, narrowed into the long style, which is club-shaped and 

 bent at the apex; stigma small, minutely 3-lobed; ovules numerous in each cavity. 

 The fruit is capsular and is only known from a single weather-beaten specimen, 

 collected by Dr. R. M. Harper; this is globose, 5 mm. in diameter, somewhat 

 irregular, 4-valved; the seed is unknown. 



The genus consists only of this North American species. Two Japanese plants, 

 now referred to the genus Tripetaleia Siebold and Zuccarini, have been placed in 

 this genus by earlier writers. The name commemorates the distinguished south- 

 em botanist, Stephen Elliott (1771-1830), author of a treatise on the southern flora. 



Fig. 686. Elliottia. 



