636 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



flattened enlarged base; or often a low shrub. Winter-buds short, obtuse, dark brown or 

 nearly black. Bark of the trunk barely T V thick, light gray, and roughened by corky 

 tubercles, with ovoid dilated bases sometimes 1' or more across and thick and rounded at 

 apex. Wood light, soft, close-grained, and light brown, with yellow sapwood. The bark, 

 which is collected in large quantities by negroes in the southern states, is used as a cure for 

 toothache and in the treatment of rheumatism. 



Distribution. Southeastern Virginia southward near the coast to the shores of Bay 

 Biscayne and Bocagrande, Lee County, Florida, and westward through the Gulf states 

 to northern Louisiana, southern Arkansas (near Arkadelphia, Clark County), and eastern 

 Oklahoma, and through Texas to the valley of the Colorado River ranging northward to 

 Tarrant and Dallas Counties; in the Atlantic states not abundant, and confined to the 

 immediate neighborhood of the coast, growing in light sandy soil and often on the low 

 bluffs of islands or on river banks; from the Gulf coast ranging farther inland, especially 

 west of the Mississippi River; most abundant in eastern Texas, and of its largest size on 

 the rich intervale lands of the streams flowing into the Trinity River. In western Texas 

 a form occurs (var. fruticosum Gray), with short sometimes 3-foliolate more or less pubes- 

 cent leaves, with small ovate or oblong blunt and conspicuous crenulate rather coriaceous 

 leaflets; this is the common form of western Texas, growing usually as a low shrub. 



3. Xanthoxylum flavum Vahl. Satinwood. 

 Fagaraflava Kr. & Urb. 



Leaves unequally pinnate, persistent, usually 6'-9' long, with a stout glandular petiole 

 enlarged at base, and usually 5, sometimes 3, or rarely 1 leaflet, unfolding hi Florida during 

 the month of June, and then densely covered with tomentum, and at maturity sparingly 



Fig. 579 



hairy on the petiole and on the midrib of the ovate-lanceolate or elliptic, obtuse, often 

 slightly falcate leaflets, sometimes oblique at base, nearly sessile or long-stalked, 2'-3' 

 long, If '-' broad, entire or slightly crenulate, coriaceous, pale yellow-green and conspic- 

 uously marked by large pellucid glands. Flowers appearing in Florida in June, on a 

 slender pubescent pedicel |' or more long, in wide-spreading pubescent sessile cymes, the 

 male and female on different trees; calyx-lobes 5, minute, acuminate, ciliate on the mar- 

 gins, barely one eighth of the length of the ovate greenish white petals reflexed when 

 the flowers are fully expanded; stamens 5, with slender filaments much longer than the 

 petals, in the pistillate flower; pistils 2 or sometimes 1, with a stipitate obovate ovary 

 and a short style with a spreading entire stigma, minute and depressed in the staminate 

 flower. Fruit ripening in autumn and early winter and sometimes persistent until the 



