LAURACE.E 



359 



ter, and stout branchlets terete or slightly angled while young, coated when they first ap- 

 pear with rusty tomentum reduced in their second season to fine pubescence persistent 

 until the end of their second or third year. Bark rarely exceeding -' in thickness, dull 

 brown, irregularly divided by shallow fissures, the surface separating into thick appressed 

 scales. Wood heavy, soft, strong, close-grained, orange color streaked with brown, with 

 thick light brown or gray sapwood of 36-40 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Pine-barren swamps, often almost to the exclusion of other plants, usually 

 in the neighborhood of the coast from southeastern Virginia (Dismal Swamp) to the valley 

 of the Caloosahatchee River and the Everglades Keys, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi; 

 extending inland to the neighborhood of Wilmington, North Carolina, Aiken, South Caro- 

 lina, western Georgia (Meriwether County) the interior of the Florida peninsula and to 

 Autauga, Chilton and Tuscaloosa Counties, Alabama (R. H. Harper). 



2. OCOTEA Aubl. 



Leaves scattered, alternate or rarely subopposite, penniveined, coriaceous, rigid, gla- 

 brous or more or less covered with pubescence. Flow r ers glabrous or tomentose on slender 

 bibracteolate pedicels from the axils of lanceolate acute minute bracts, in cymose clusters 

 in axillary or subterminal stalked panicles; calyx-tube campanulate, the 6 lobes of the limb 

 nearly equal, deciduous; stamens of the inner series reduced to linear staminodes, with 

 minute abortive anthers; filaments inserted on the tube of the calyx, those of the outer 

 series opposite its exterior lobes, shorter or sometimes rather longer than the anthers, gla- 

 brous or hirsute, furnished in the thirfl series near the base with two conspicuous globose 

 stalked yellow glands; anthers oblong, flattened, 4-celled, introrse in the 2 outer series, 

 extrorse, subextrorse, or very rarely introrse in the third series, in the pistillate flower rudi- 

 mentary and sterile; ovary ovoid, glabrous, more or less immersed in the tube of the calyx, 

 gradually narrowed into a short erect style dilated at apex into a capitate obscurely lobed 

 stigma; in the staminate flower linear-lanceolate, effete or minute, sometimes 0; raphe 

 ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit nearly inclosed while young in the thickened tube of 

 the calyx, exserted at maturity, surrounded at base by the cup-like truncate or slightly 

 lobed calyx-tube; pericarp thin and fleshy. Seed ovoid, pendulous; testa thin, membra- 

 naceous. 



Ocotea with nearly two hundred species is confined principally to the tropical region of 

 the New World from southern Florida to Brazil and Peru, with Old W r orld representatives 

 in the Canary Islands, South Africa, and the Mascarene Islands. One species grows nat- 

 urally in Florida. 



Ocotea produces hard, strong, durable, beautifully colored wood often employed in cabinet- 

 making. 



The name is derived from the native name of one of the species of Guiana. 



1 . Ocotea Catesbyana Sarg. 



Leaves oblong-lanceolate, entire, slightly contracted above into a long point rounded 

 at apex, when they unfold thin, membranaceous, light green tinged with red, and some- 

 times puberulous on the lower surface, at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark green and 

 lustrous above, pale below. 3'-6' long, l'-2' wide, with thickened slightly revolute margins, 

 a broad stout midrib, slender remote primary veins arcuate and united near the margins 

 and connected by coarsely reticulate conspicuous veinlets; petioles broad, flat, f'~|' in 

 length. Flowers perfect, appearing in early summer in elongated panicles, their peduncles 

 slender, glabrous, light red, solitary or 2 or 3 together from the axils of the leaves of the 

 year or from those of the previous year, and 3' A' long; calyx nearly \' across when ex- 

 panded, puberulous en the outer surface, hoary pubescent on the inner surface and on the 

 margins of the lobes, about twice as long as the stamens; filaments of the 2 outer series 

 slightly hirsute at the base and shorter than their, introrse anthers; filaments of the third 

 series as long or longer than their extrorse anthers. Fruit ripening in the autumn, ovoid 



