TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



coming in their second year brown and marked by small scattered wart-like excrescences. 

 Bark f thick, dark reddish brown, divided by broad shallow fissures, separating on the sur- 

 face into numerous small scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, light brown streaked with 

 yellow. 



Distribution. Florida: Indian River on the east coast, and the shores of the Manatee 

 River on the west coast to the southern Keys; in shallow fresh water ponds, on swampy 

 hummocks, or on the borders of fresh water streams flowing from the everglades; of its 

 largest size on the shpres of Bay Biscayne near the Miami River, growing in the shade of 

 larger trees; forming a pure forest of great extent on the swampy borders of Lake Oke- 

 chobee; on the Bahama Islands and on several of the Antilles. 



XVIH. LAURACRffi. 



Aromatic trees and shrubs, with slender terete or angled branchlets, naked or scaly 

 buds, and alternate punctate leaves without stipules. Flowers small, perfect or polygamo- 

 dicecious, yellow or greenish; calyx 6-lobed, the lobes in 2 series, imbricated in the bud; 

 corolla 0; stamens 9 or 12, inserted on the base or near the middle of the calyx in 3 or 4 

 series of 3's, distinct; anthers 4-celled, superposed in pairs, opening from below upward by 

 persistent lids; ovary 1-celled; stigma discoid or capitate; ovule solitary, suspended from 

 the apex of the cell, anatropous. Fruit a 1-seeded berry; seed without albumen; testa 

 thin and membranaceous, of 2 coats; embryo erect; cotyledons thick and fleshy; radicle 

 superior, turned toward the hilum, included between thick and fleshy cotyledons. The 

 Laurel family with about forty genera, confined mostly to the tropics, is represented in 

 North America by seven genera; of these five are arborescent. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT GENERA. 



Leaves entire, persistent; stamens 12 those of the inner row reduced to staminodes. 

 Calyx-lobes persistent under the fruit, in our species. 1. Persea. 



Calyx-lobes deciduous. 



Flower cymose in axillary or subterminal panicles. 2. Ocotea. 



Flowers in axillary many-flowered umbels inclosed before anthesis in an involucre of 



deciduous scales. 3. Umbellularia. 



Leaves entire or lobed, deciduous; stamens 9 in the American species; flowers in few- 



flowered drooping racemes. 4. Sassafras. 



Leaves entire, persistent; stamens 9, those of the outer row fertile and united in a column 



inclosing the pistil; flowers in terminal or axillary cymose panicles. 5. Misanteca. 



1. PERSEA MiU. 



Trees, with naked buds. Leaves revolute in the bud, alternate, scattered, penniveined, 

 subcoriaceous, rigid, tomentose or rarely glabrous, persistent. Flowers perfect, vernal, 

 in short axillary or axillary and terminal panicles on slender peduncles from axils of the 

 leaves of the year, pedicellate, their pedicels bibracteolate near the middle, the lateral 

 flowers of the ultimate divisions of the inflorescence in the axils of small deciduous lanceo- 

 late acute bracts; calyx campanulate, divided nearly to the base into 6 lobes, those of the 

 outer series shorter than the others, deciduous, or enlarged and persistent under the fruit; 

 stamens about as long as the inner lobes of the calyx; filaments flattened, longer than the 

 anthers, hirsute, those of the third series furnished near the base with 2 nearly sessile 

 orange-colored glands rounded on the back and slightly 2-lobed on the inner face; anthers 

 ovoid, flattened, erect, those of the outer series introrse or subintrorse, those of the third 

 series extrorse or laterally dehiscent, the upper cells rather larger than the lower; stamin- 

 odes large, sagittate, stipitate, 2-lobed on the inner face, beaded at apex; ovary sessile, sub- 

 globose, glabrous, narrowed into a slender simple style gradually enlarged at apex into a 





