SIMAROUBACE^E 



643 



trunk 18'-20' in diameter, slender spreading branches, and stout glabrous branchlets pale 

 green when they first appear, becoming light brown before the end of the summer, rugose 

 and conspicuously marked during their second season by the large oval leaf-scars. Bark 

 of the trunk j'-f thick, light red-brown and broken on the surface into broad thick ap- 

 pressed scales. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light brown, with thick rather darker 

 colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Florida, from Cape Canaveral and the shores of Bay Biscayne to the 

 southern keys; in Cuba, Jamaica, Nicaragua, and Brazil. 



2. PICRAMNIA Sw. 



Trees or shrubs, with bitter principles and slender terete branchlets. Leaves alter- 

 nate, unequally pinnate, persistent, the leaflets subopposite to alternate, entire. Flowers 

 dioecious, occasionally perfect, small, glomerate on long pendulous spikes or racemes 

 opposite the leaves; calyx 3-5-parted, the lobes imbricated in the bud; petals 3-5, im- 

 bricated in the bud, rarely wanting; stamens 3-5, opposite the petals, inserted under 

 the lobed depressed disk, in the pistillate flower reduced to linear scales or wanting; 

 filaments naked; anthers 2-celled, introrse, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary inserted 

 on the disk, 2 or 3-celled, rudimentary in the staminate flower; style 2 or 3-lobed, the 

 lobes recurved and stigmatic on the inner surface, or crowned by a 2 or 3-lobed sessile 

 stigma; ovules 2 in each cell, collateral, attached at the inner angle of the cell near its apex, 

 anatropous; raphe narrow; micropyle superior. Fruit baccate, oblong to oblong-obovoid, 

 2 or by abortion 1-celled, the cells 1-seeded. Seeds filling the cavity of the cell, plano- 

 convex, pendulous from the apex of the cell; hilum minute, apical, the raphe conspicuous; 

 testa membranaceous, adherent to the exalbuminous undivided embryo; radicle superior, 

 inconspicuous. 



Picramnia, with about twenty species, is confined to the tropical and subtropical regions 

 of the New World, one species extending into southern Florida. The bitter principle in 

 the plants of this genus makes the bark of several of them useful in domestic remedies. 



The generic name, from irtKp6s and 6d/jivos, is in reference to this bitter principle. 



1. Picramnia pentandra Sw. 



Leaves 8'-12' long, 5-9-foliolate, with a slender rachis and petiole; leaflets ovate-oblong, 

 abruptly acuminate at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, coriaceous, glabrous. 



Fig. 585 



