LEITNEBIACE^E U)7 



Distribution. Ocean sand-dunes and moist hillsides in the vicinity of the coast from the 

 shores of Puget Sound to the neighborhood of Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, Cali- 

 fornia; of its largest size on the shores of the Bay of San Francisco. 



Occasionally used in California as a garden plant. 



VH. LEITNERIACE^:. 



A tree or shrub, with pale slightly fissured bark, scaly buds, stout terete pithy branchlets 

 marked by pale conspicuous nearly circular lenticels and by elevated crescent-shaped 

 angled or obscurely 3-lobed leaf-scars, very light soft wood, and thick fleshy stoloniferous 

 yellow roots. Leaves involute in the bud, lanceolate to elliptic-lanceolate, acuminate or 

 acute and short-pointed at apex, gradually narrowed at base, entire, with slightly revolute 

 undulate margins, penniveined with remote primary veins arcuate and united near the 

 margins, and conspicuous reticulate veinlets, petiolate, at first coated on the lower surface 

 and on the petioles with thick pale tomentum and puberulous on the upper surface, thick 

 and firm at maturity, bright green and lustrous above, pale and villose-pubescent below, 

 deciduous. Flowers in unisexual aments, with ovate acute concave tomentose scales, the 

 male and female on different plants, opening in early spring from buds formed the previous 

 autumn and covered with acute chestnut-brown hairy scales; the staminate clustered near 

 the end of the branches, their scales bearing on the thickened stipe a ring of 3-12 stamens, 

 with slender incurved filaments and oblong light yellow introrse 2-celled anthers opening 

 longitudinally; perianth 0; pistillate aments scattered, shorter and more slender than the 

 staminate, their scales bearing in their axils a short-stalked pistil surrounded by a rudi- 

 mentary perianth of small gland-fringed scales, the 2 larger lateral, the others next the axis 

 of the inflorescence; ovary superior, pubescent, 1-celled, with an elongated flattened style 

 inserted obliquely, curving inward above the middle in anthesis, grooved and stigmatic on 

 the inner face; ovule solitary, attached laterally, ascending, semianatropous; micropyle 

 directed upward. Fruit an oblong compressed dry drupe thick and rounded on the ventral, 

 narrowed on the dorsal edge, rounded at base, thin and pointed at apex, chestnut-brown, 

 rugose, with a thick dry exocarp closely investing the thin-walled light brown crustaceous 

 rugose nutlet. Seed flattened, rounded at the ends, light brown, marked on the thick 

 edge with the oblong nearly black hilum; embryo erect, surrounded by thin fleshy albu- 

 men; cotyledons oblong, flattened; radicle superior, conical, short, and fleshy. 



The family consists of a single genus, Leitneria Chapm., with one species of the south- 

 ern United States, named for a German naturalist killed in Florida during the Seminole 

 War. 



1. Leitneria floridana Chapm. Cork Wood. 



Leaves 4'^6' long, 1|'-2|' wide, with petioles l'-2' in length. Flowers opening at the 

 end of February or early in March; staminate aments I'-lj' long, \' thick, and twice as 

 long as the pistillate. Fruit solitary or in clusters of 2-4, ripening when the leaves are 

 about half grown, f long, \' wide. 



A shrub or small tree, occasionally 20 high, with a slender straight trunk 4'-5' in diame- 

 ter above the swollen gradually tapering base, spreading branches forming a loose open 

 head, and branchlets at first light reddish brown and thickly coated with gradually decidu- 

 ous hairs, becoming in their first winter glabrous or puberulous, especially toward the ends, 

 and dark red-brown. Winter-buds: terminal broad, conic, \ r long, covered by 10 or 12 

 oblong nearly triangular closely imbricated scales coated with pale tomentum and long- 

 persistent at the base of the branch; lateral scattered, ovoid, flattened. Bark about T V 

 thick, dark gray faintly tinged with brown, divided by shallow fissures into narrow rounded 

 ridges. Wood soft, exceedingly light, close-grained, the layers of annual growth hardty 

 distinguishable, pale yellow, without trace of heartwood; occasionally used for the floats of 

 fishing-nets. 



Distribution. Borders of swamps of the lower Altamaha River, Georgia (C. L. Boyntori)', 



