HAMAMELIDACE.E 



1. LIQUID AMBAR L. 



367 



Trees, with balsamic juices, scaly bark, terete often winged branchlets, scaly buds, and 

 fibrous roots. Leaves plicate in the bud, alternate, palmately lobed, glandular-serrate, 

 long-petiolate; stipules lanceolate, acute, caducous. Flowers monoecious or rarely perfect 

 in capitate heads surrounded by an involucre of 4 deciduous bracts, the staminate in 

 terminal racemes, the pistillate in solitary long-stalked heads from the axils of upper leaves; 

 staminate flowers without a calyx and corolla; stamens indefinite, interspersed with minute 

 scales; filaments filiform, shorter than the oblong obcordate anthers opening longitudinally; 

 pistillate flowers surrounded by long-awned scales, the whole confluent into a globular 

 head; calyx obconic, its limb short or nearly obsolete; stamens usually 4, inserted on the 

 summit of the calyx; anthers minute, usually rudimentary or abortive, rarely fertile; ovary 

 partly inferior, of 2 united carpels terminating in elongated subulate recurved persistent 

 styles stigmatic on the inner face; ovules numerous. Capsules armed with the hardened 

 incurved elongated styles free above, septicidally dehiscent, consolidated by their base 

 into a globose head; pericarp thick and woody; endocarp thin, corneous, lustrous on the 

 inner surface. Seeds usually solitary or 2 by the abortion of many ovules, compressed, 

 angulate; seed-coat opaque, crustaceous, produced into a short membranaceous obovate 

 terminal wing rounded at the oblique apex. 



Liquidambar with about four species is confined to the eastern United States, southern 

 and central Mexico, Central America, southwestern Asia, middle and southeastern China, 

 and Formosa. Liquid storax, an opaque grayish brown resin, is derived from Liquidam- 

 bar orientalis Mill., a native of Asia Minor. 



Liquidambar from liqiiidus and ambar in allusion to the fragrant juices. 



1. Liquidambar Styraciflua L. Sweet Gum. Bilsted. 



Leaves generally round in outline, truncate or slightly heart-shaped at base, deeply 

 5-7-lobed, with acutely pointed divisions finely serrate with rounded appressed teeth, 



Fig. 328 



when they unfold pilose on the lower surface, soon becoming glabrous with the exception of 

 large tufts of pale rufous hairs in the axils of the principal veins, at maturity thin, bright 

 green, smooth and lustrous, 6'-7' across, with broad primary veins and finely reticulate 

 veinlets; exhaling when bruised a pleasant resinous fragrance; in the autumn turning deep 

 crimson; petioles slender, covered at first near the base with rufous caducous hairs, and 

 5 '-6' in length; stipules entire, glabrous, \'-%' long. Flowers: staminate in terminal 

 racemes 2'-3' long covered with rufous hairs, in heads stalked toward the base of the 

 raceme and nearly sessile above, j' in diameter, and surrounded by ovate acute deciduous 

 hairy bracts much larger than the lanceolate acute bracts of the female inflorescence \' 



