PLATANACE.E 371 



southern and central Mississippi, and through Louisiana to eastern Texas (Beaumont, 

 Jefferson County, and Fletcher, Harding County), and southern Arkansas; generally dis- 

 tributed and most abundant in Louisiana; probably of its largest size on the bluffs of 

 the Alabama River in Dallas County, Alabama. 



XXI. PLATANACE^E. 



Trees, with watery juice, thick deeply furrowed scaly bark exfoliating from the branches 

 and young trunks in large thin plates, terete zigzag pithy branchlets prolonged by an upper 

 axillary bud, and fibrous roots. Winter-buds axillary, conic, large, smooth, and lustrous, 

 nearly surrounded at base by the narrow leaf-scars displaying a row of conspicuous dark 

 fibro-vascular bundle-scars, covered by 3 deciduous scales,- the 2 inner accrescent, strap- 

 shaped, rounded at apex at maturity, marking in falling the base of the branchlet with 

 narrow ring-like scars, the outer scale surrounding the bud and splitting longitudinally with 

 its expansion, the second light green, covered by a gummy fragrant secretion and usually 

 inclosing a bud in its axil, the third coated with long rufous hairs. Leaves longitudinally 

 plicate in vernation, alternate, broadly ovate, cordttte, truncate, or cuneate and decurrent 

 on the petiole at base, more or less acutely 3-7-lobed, and occasionally furnished with a 

 more or less enlarged basal lobe, the lobes entire, dentate with minute remote callous teeth, 

 or coarsely sinuate-toothed, penniveined, the veins arcuate and united near the margins 

 and connected by inconspicuous reticulate veinlets, clothed while young like the petioles, 

 stipules, and young branchlets with caducous stellate sharp-pointed branching hairs, pale 

 on the lower and rufous on the upper surface, long-petiolate; turning brown and withering 

 in the autumn before falling; petioles abruptly enlarged at base and inclosing the buds; 

 stipules membranaceous, laterally united below into a short tube surrounding the branchlet 

 above the insertion of their leaf, acute, more or less free above, dentate or entire, thin and 

 scarious on flowering shoots, broad and leaf-like on vigorous sterile branchlets, caducous, 

 marking the branchlet in falling with narrow ring-like scars. Flowers minute, appearing 

 with the unfolding of the leaves in dense unisexual pedunculate solitary or spicate heads, 

 the staminate and pistillate heads on separate peduncles or rarely united on the same pe- 

 duncle; staminate heads dark red on axillary peduncles; pistillate heads light green tinged 

 with red, on long terminal peduncles, the lateral heads in the spicate clusters sessile and 

 embracing at maturity the peduncle, usually persistent on the branches during the winter; 

 calyx of the staminate flower divided into 3-6 minute scale-like sepals slightly united at 

 base, about half as long as the 3-6 cuneiform sulcate scarious pointed petals; stamens as 

 many as the divisions of the calyx, opposite them, with short nearly obsolete filaments, and 

 elongated clavate 2-celled anthers, their cells opening longitudinally and crowned by a 

 capitate pilose truncate connective; calyx of the pistillate flower divided into 3-6, usually 4, 

 rounded sepals much shorter than the acute petals; stamens scale-like, elongated-obovoid, 

 pilose at apex; ovaries as many as the divisions of the calyx, superior, oblong, sessile, sur- 

 rounded at base by long ridged jointed pale hairs persistent round the fruit, gradually nar- 

 rowed into long simple bright red styles papillose-stigmatic to below the middle along 

 the ventral suture; ovules 1 or rarely 2, suspended laterally, orthotropous. Head of fruit 

 composed of elongated obovoid akenes rounded and obtuse or acute at apex, surmounted 

 by the persistent styles, 1-seeded, light yellow-brown; pericarp thin, coriaceous. Seed 

 elongated-oblong, suspended; testa thin and firm, light chestnut-brown; embryo erect in 

 thin fleshy albumen; cotyledons oblong, about as long as the elongated cylindric erect 

 radicle turned toward the minute apical hilum. Wood hard and heavy not strong, light 

 brown tinged with red, with numerous broad conspicuous medullary rays and bands of 

 smaller ducts marking the layers of annual growth. A family of a single genus. 



1. PLATANUS L. Plane-tree. 



Characters of the family. 



A genus of four or five species of eastern and western North America, Mexico, Central 

 America, and of southwestern Asia, all resembling each other except in the form of the lobes 



