HORACES 333 



A tree, sometimes 50-60 high, with a short trunk 2-3 in diameter, and stout erect 

 ultimately spreading branches forming a handsome open irregular round-topped head, and 

 branchlets light green often tinged with red and coated with soft pale pubescence when they 

 first appear, soon becoming glabrous, light brown slightly tinged with orange color during 

 their first winter, and ultimately paler. Winter-buds depressed-globose, partly immersed 

 in the bark, covered by few closely imbricated ovate rounded light chestnut-brow T n ciliate 

 conspicuous scales. Bark f '-!' thick, and deeply and irregularly divided into broad rounded 

 ridges separating on the surface into thin appressed scales. Wood heavy, exceedingly 

 hard, very strong, flexible, coarse-grained, very durable, bright orange color turning brown 

 on exposure, with thin light yellow sapwood of 5-10 layers of annual growth; largely used 

 for fence-posts, railway-ties, wheel-stock, and formerly by the Osage and other Indians 

 west of the Mississippi River for bows and war-clubs. The bark of the roots contains 

 moric and morintannic acid, and is used as a yellow dye. The bark of the trunk is some- 

 times used in tanning leather. 



Distribution. Rich bottom-lands; southern Arkansas to southern Oklahoma and south- 

 ward in Texas to about latitude 35 36'; most abundant and of its largest size in the valley 

 of the Red River in Oklahoma. 



Largely planted in the prairie regions of the Mississippi basin as a hedge plant, and oc- 

 casionally in the eastern states; hardy in New England; occasionally naturalized beyond 

 the limits of its natural range. 



3. FICUS L. Fig. 



Trees, with milky juice, naked buds, stout branchlets, thick fleshy roots frequently 

 produced from the branches and developing into supplementary stems. Leaves invo- 

 lute, entire and persistent in American species; stipules inclosing the leaf in a slender 

 sharp-pointed bud-like cover, interpetiolar, embracing the leaf-bearing axis and inclosing 

 the young leaves, deciduous. Flo\ver-bearing receptacle subglobose to ovoid, sessile or 

 stalked, solitary by abortion or in pairs in the axils of existing or fallen leaves, surrounded 

 at base by 3 anterior bracts distinct or united into an involucral cup bearing on the interior 

 at the apex numerous rows of minute triangular viscid bracts closing the orifice, those of 

 the lower rows turned downward and infolding the upper flowers, those immediately 

 above these horizontal and forming a more or less prominent umbilicus. Flowers sessile 

 or pedicellate, the pedicels thickening and becoming succulent with the ripening of the 

 fruit, unisexual, often separated by chaffy scales or hairs; calyx of the staminate flower 

 usually divided into 2-6 sepals; stamen 1 ; filament short, erect; anther innate, ovoid, 

 broad and subrotund, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally, in the pistillate flower; 

 sepals or lobes of the calyx of the pistillate flower usually narrower than those of the stami- 

 nate flower; ovary sessile, erect or oblique, surmounted by the lateral elongated style 

 crowned by a 2-lobed stigma; ovule suspended from the apex or lateral below the apex 

 of the cell, anatropous. Fruit mostly immersed in the thickened succulent receptacle, 

 obovoid or reniform; flesh thin, mucilaginous; nutlet with a flat crustaceous minutely 

 tuberculate shell. Seed suspended; testa membranaceous; embryo incurved, in thin fleshy 

 albumen, cotyledons equal or unequal, longer than the incumbent radicle. 



Ficus, of which about six hundred species have been described, is largely distributed 

 through the topics of both hemispheres, the largest number of species being found on the 

 islands of the Indian Archipelago and the Pacific Ocean. A few species extend beyond 

 the tropics into southern Florida, Mexico, Argentina, southern Japan and China, the coun- 

 tries bordering the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands, and South Africa. Two species 

 of the section Urostigma with monoecious flowers occur in tropical Florida. Ficus Carica 

 L., probably a native of the Mediterranean basin, is cultivated in the southern states and 

 in California for its large sweet succulent fruits, the figs of commerce. 



