SIMAROUBACE^E 641 



lanceolate, entire or remotely crenulate, coriaceous, lustrous, dark yellow-green, conspicu- 

 ously reticulate- veined, covered below with minute glandular dots, l'-2|' long, with slender 

 petiolules, that of the terminal leaflet often 1' or more long and twice as long as those of the 

 lateral leaflets. Flowers in terminal pedunculate or nearly sessile panicles appearing in 

 Florida from August to December. Fruit ripening in the spring, ovoid, often nearly %' 

 long, black covered with a glaucous bloom, with thin flesh filled with an aromatic oil and of 

 rather agreeable flavor. 



A slender tree, 40-50 high, with a trunk sometimes, although rarely, a foot in diameter, 

 and slender terete branchlets covered with wart-like excrescences, at first light brown, be- 



Fig. 583 



coming gray during their second season. Bark of the trunk thin, gray-brown, slightly 

 furrowed and broken into short appressed scales. Winter-buds acute, flattened, J' long, 

 with broad-ovate scales slightly keeled on the back. Wood heavy, exceedingly hard, 

 strong, close-grained, very resinous, extremely durable, light orange color, with thin rather 

 lighter colored sapwood of 12-15 layers of annual growth; often used as fuel. 



Distribution. Florida, Mosquito Inlet, Volusia County, to the southern keys; common 

 in the immediate neighborhood of the coast to the rich hummocks of the interior, and of 

 its largest size on Umbrella Key; on the Bahama Islands and on many of the Antilles. 



XXVII. SIMAROUBACE^E. 



Trees or shrubs, with bitter juice. Leaves alternate, pinnate, persistent, without 

 stipules. Flowers regular, dioecious; calyx 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; petals 

 5, imbricated in the bud, hypogynous; stamens 10, inserted under the disk; pistil of 5 

 united carpels; ovary 5-ceJled; ovule solitary in each cell, anatropous; raphe ventral; 

 micropyle superior. Fruit a drupe. 



Of the thirty genera of this family, confined chiefly to the tropics and to the warmer parts 

 of the northern hemisphere, three have arborescent representatives in the flora of North 

 America. Ailanthus altissima Swing., the so-called Tree of Heaven, a native of northern 

 China, has been largely planted as an ornament and shade tree in the eastern United 

 States, and is now sparingly naturalized southward. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Fruit a drupe or berry. 



Ovary deeply 5-lobed; fruit drupaceous. 1. Simarouba (D). 



Ovary not lobed; fruit baccate. 2. Picramnia (D). 



Fruit a 3-winged samara. 3. Alvaradoa (D). 



