MAGNOLIACE.E 



351 



color, the mature carpels ending in short incurved persistent tips; seeds ovoid, com- 

 pressed. 



A slender tree, 20-30 high, with ascending branches, slender branchlets bright red- 

 brown and marked by small pale lenticels and by the small low oval leaf-scars with many 

 crowded fibro-vascular bundle-scars, later becoming ashy gray. 



Distribution. Low rich soil in the neighborhood of streams; near Cuthbert, Randolph 

 County, Georgia; near Mariana, Jackson County, and Bristol, Liberty County, Florida; 

 valleys of the Choctawhatchee River, Dale County, and of the Pea River, Coffee County, 

 and near Selma, Dallas County, Alabama; rare and local. 



Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental tree in western Europe. 



2. L1RIODENDRON L. 



Trees, with deeply furrowed brown bitter bark, and slender branchlets marked by ele- 

 vated leaf-scars and narrow stipular rings, and compressed obtuse winter-buds, their scales 

 membranaceous stipules joined at the edges, accrescent, strap-shaped, often slightly fal- 

 cate, oblique at the unequal base, tardily deciduous after the unfolding of the leaf. Leaves 

 recurved in the bud by the bending down of the petiole near the middle, bringing the apex 

 of the blade to the base of the bud, sinuately 4-lobed, heart-shaped, truncate or slightly 

 cuneate at base, truncate at apex by a broad shallow sinus, and minutely apiculate. 

 Flowers appearing after the unfolding of the leaves, cup-shaped, conspicuous, inclosed in 

 the bud in a 2-valved stipular membranaceous caducous spathe; sepals spreading or re^ 

 flexed, ovate-lanceolate, concave, greenish white, early deciduous; petals erect, rounded at 

 base, early deciduous; filaments filiform, half as long as the linear 2-celled extrorse anthers 

 adnate to the outer face of the connective terminating in a short fleshy point; pistils imbri- 

 cated on the elongated sessile receptacle into a spindle-shaped column; ovary inserted by 

 a broad base; style narrowly acuminate, laterally flattened, appressed; stigmas short, re- 

 curved at the summit; ovules 2, suspended from near the middle of the ventral suture. 

 Fruit a narrow light brown cone formed of the closely imbricated dry and woody indehis- 

 cent carpels consisting of a laterally compressed 4-ribbed pericarp, the lateral ribs confluent 

 into the margins of the large w r ing-like lanceolate compressed style marked vertically by a 

 thin sutural line, the carpels deciduous when ripe in the autumn from the slender elongated 

 axis of the fruit persistent on the branch during the winter. Seeds suspended, 2 or single 

 by abortion; testa thin, coriaceous, and marked by a narrow prominent raphe; embryo 

 minute at the base of the fleshy albumen, its radicle next the hilum. 



Liriodendron, widely distributed in North America and Europe during the cretaceous 



