364 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



the Choctaw Indians of Louisiana, gives flavor and consistency to gumbo soup. Passing 

 into the var. albidum Blake, with glabrous or nearly glabrous young leaves, glabrous often 

 glaucous young branch lets, and lighter colored less valuable wood; uplands of western New 

 England to the mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. 



Distribution. Usually in rich sandy well-drained soil, southern Maine and eastern 

 Massachusetts, through southern Vermont to southern Ontario, central Michigan, and 

 southeastern Iowa to eastern Kansas and Oklahoma, and southward to central Florida 

 (Orange County) and the valley of the Brazos River, Texas; ascending on the southern 

 Appalachian Mountains to altitudes of 4000; in the south Atlantic and Gulf states often 

 taking possession of abandoned fields. 



Occasionally cultivated in the eastern states as an ornamental tree. 



5. MISANTECA Cham. & Schl. 



Trees with terete branchlets. Leaves coriaceous, persistent. Flowers perfect, minute, on 

 slender pedicels, in terminal or axillary cymose panicles; peduncles and pedicels from the 

 axils of acuminate caducous bracts and bractlets; perianth fleshy, ovoid or obovoid, 6- 

 toothed; stamens 9, inserted near the middle of the perianth, those of the outer rank united 

 into a fleshy column, furnished at base with three pairs of glands, inclosing the pistil and 

 slightly longer than the perianth, those of the inner ranks, sterile, short or obsolete; anthers 

 extrorse, 2-celled, the cells united; ovary gradually narrowed into a thick style as long as 

 the staminal tube; stigma capitate. Fruit baccate, olive-shaped, surrounded at base by 

 the enlarged ligneous capsular perianth of the flower much thickened on the margin; peri- 

 carp thin and fleshy; endocarp thin, crustaceous; seed filling the cavity of the fruit; testa 

 thin, crustaceous; hilum minute, apical; cotyledons plano-convex, fleshy; radicle superior, 

 minute. 



Of the three species of the genus now known one occurs in southern Florida and Cuba, and 

 the others hi tropical Mexico. 



The name of the genus is derived from the name of the tree, Palo Misanteca at Misantha, 

 near the coast of the state of Vera Cruz where the type species was discovered. 



1. Misanteca triandra Mez.- 



Leaves elliptic-lanceolate, ovate or broad-elliptic, entire, abruptly long-pointed and acu- 

 minate at apex, gradually narrowed and acuminate at base, deeply tinged with red and 



Fig. 326 



