ANONACE.E 



353 



XVH. ANONACE^E. 



Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, slender terete branchlets marked by conspicuous 

 leaf-scars, and fleshy roots. Leaves alternate, conduplicate in the bud, entire, feather- 

 veihed, petiolate, without stipules. Flowers perfect, solitary, axillary or opposite the 

 leaves; sepals 3, valvate in the bud; petals 6, in 2 series, imbricated or valvate in the bud; 

 stamens numerous, inserted on the subglobose or hemispheric receptacle, with distinct fila- 

 ments shorter than their fleshy connectives terminating in a broad truncate glandular ap- 

 pendage; anthers introrse,.2-celled. opening longitudinally; pistils inserted on the summit 

 of the receptacle; ovary 1-celled; ovules 1 or many, anatropous. Fruit baccate or com- 

 pound. Seeds inclosed in an aril ; seed-coat thin, crustaceous, smooth, brown, and lustrous; 

 albumen ruminate, deeply penetrated by the folds of the inner layer of the seed-coat; em- 

 bryo minute; radicle next the hilum. Two of the forty-eight or fifty genera of the Custard- 

 apple family, confined almost exclusively to the tropics and more numerous in the Old 

 World than in the New, occur in North America. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN GENERA. 



Petals imbricated in the bud; ovules numerous; fruit developed from one pistil. 1 . Asimina. 

 Petals valvate in the bud; ovule solitary; fruit developed from several confluent pistils. 



2. Anona. 



1. ASIMINA Adans. 



Trees or shrubs, emitting a heavy disagreeable odor when bruised, with minute buds 

 covered with cinereo-pubescent caducous scales, and branchlets marked by conspicu- 

 ous leaf-scars. Leaves membranaceous, reticulate-venulose, deciduous. Flowers, solitary 

 pedicellate, nodding; sepals ovate, smaller than the petals, green, deciduous; petals 

 imbricated in the bud, hypogynous, sessile, ovate or obovate-oblong, reticulate-veined, 

 accrescent, the three exterior alternate with the sepals, spreading, those of the interior row 

 opposite the sepals, erect, and much smaller than those of the outer row; stamens linear- 

 cuneate, densely packed on the receptacle; filaments shorter than the fleshy connective; 

 anther-cells separated on the connective; pistils 3-15, sessile on the summit of the recepta- 

 cle, projecting from the globular mass of stamens; ovary 1-celled; style oblong, slightly re- 

 curved toward the apex and stigmatic along the margin; ovules 4-20, horizontal, 2-ranked 

 on the ventral suture, the raphe toward the suture. Fruit baccate, sessile or stipitate, oval 

 or oblong, smooth. Seeds in 1 or 2 ranks, ovoid, apiculate, compressed, marked at the 

 base by a large pale hilum. 



Asimina is confined to eastern North America. Six species are distinguished; of these 

 one is a small tree; the others are low shrubs of the south Atlantic and Gulf regions. 



Asimina is from Asiminier, the old colonial name of the French in America for the 

 Pawpaw. 



1. Asimina triloba Dtmal. Pawpaw. 



Leaves obovate-lanceolate, sharp-pointed at apex, gradually and regularly narrowed to 

 the base, when they unfold covered below with short rusty brown caducous tomentum and 

 slightly pilose above, and at maturity light green on the upper surface, pale on the lower 

 surface, 10'-12' long, 4'-6' wide, with a prominent midrib and primary veins. Flowers 

 nearly 2' across when fully grown, on stout club-shaped pedicels from axils of the leaves 

 of the previous year, l'-l|' long and covered with long scattered rusty brown hairs; sepals 

 ovate, acuminate, pale green, densely pubescent on the outer surface: petals green at first, 

 covered with short appressed hairs, gradually turning brown and at maturity deep vinous 

 red and conspicuously venulose, those of the outer row broadly ovate, rounded or pointed 

 at apex, reflexed at maturity above the middle and 2 or 3 times longer than the sepals, 

 those of the inner row pointed, erect, their base concave, glandular, nectariferous, marked 



