648 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



Distribution. Colorado Desert, between Fish Creek and Carriso Creek about twenty- 

 five miles from the. Mexican Boundary, on " banks of dry washes, in hard sterile soil cov- 

 ered with boulders" (E. H. Davis), Imperial County, California; near Maricopa, Final 

 County, Arizona, and in Lower California and Sonora; reported as a tree only from Cali- 

 fornia. 



XXIX. MELIACE^E. 



Trees or shrubs, with hard wood and alternate pinnate leaves, without stipules. Flowers 

 in panicles, perfect, regular; calyx o-lobed, the lobes contorted (in Swietenia) in the bud, 

 persistent; petals 5, convolute in the bud; stamens inserted at the base of the disk; fila- 

 ments united into a tube; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary 

 3-5-celled, free, surrounded at base by an annular or cup-shaped disk; styles united, 

 dilated into a 5-lobed stigma; ovules numerous in each cell, suspended, semi-anatropous; 

 raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit a capsule (in Swietenia) or drupe. Seeds often 

 winged; embryo with leafy cotyledons. 



A family with about forty genera chiefly confined to the tropics, with a single represen- 

 tative, Swietenia, in southern Florida. Melia Azedarach L., of this family, the China-tree 

 or Pride of India, with drupaceous fruits, has long been cultivated in the southern states, 

 where it now often grows spontaneously. 



1. SWIETENIA Jacq. 



Trees, with heavy dark red wood. Leaves abruptly pinnate, glabrous, long-petiolate, 

 persistent; leaflets opposite, petiolulate, usually oblique at base. Flowers small, in 

 axillary or subterminal panicles produced near the end of the branches; calyx minute; 

 petals spreading; staminal tube urn-shaped, connate with the petals, 10-lobed, the lobes 

 convolute in the bud; anthers 10, fixed by the back below the sinuses of the staminal tube, 

 included; ovary ovoid, 5-celled, the cells opposite the petals; style erect, longer than the 

 tube of the stamens; stigma discoid, 5-rayed. Fruit a 5-celled 5-valved capsule septi- 

 cidally dehiscent from the base, the valves separating from a persistent .5-angled axis 

 thickened toward the apex and 5-winged toward the base. Seeds suspended from near 

 the summit of the axis, imbricated in 2 ranks, compressed, emarginate, produced above 

 into a long membranaceous wing with the hilum at its apex and trans versed by the raphe; 

 embryo transverse; cotyledons conferruminate with each other and with the thin fleshy 

 albumen; radicle short, papillaeform. 



Swietenia with five species is confined to tropical America from southern Florida where 

 one species occurs, to Venezuela, western and southwestern Mexico, and the east coast 

 of Central America. 



The generic name is in honor of Baron von Swieten (1700-1772), the distinguished 

 Dutch physician, founder of the Botanic Garden and of the Medical School at Vienna. 



1. Swietenia mahagoni Jacq. Mahogany. 



Leaves 4'-6' long, with a slender glabrous petiole thickened at base and 3 or 4 pairs of 

 ovate-lanceolate leaflets rounded at base on the upper side, narrow r -cuneate or nearly 

 straight on the lower side, entire, coriaceous, pale yellow-green or slightly rufous on the 

 under surface, 3'-4' long, l'-l|' wide, with a prominent reddish brown midrib, conspicu- 

 ous reticulate veins, and a stout grooved petiolule \' long. Flowers appearing in July and 

 August on slender puberulous pedicels, bibracteolate near the middle, 1 or 2 together at 

 the end of the branches of slender panicles in the axils of leaves of the year; calyx glabrous, 

 cup-shaped, much shorter than the ovate elliptic petals f ' long and slightly emarginate at 

 apex. Fruit ripening in the autumn or early winter, long-stalked, ovoid, rounded at 

 apex narrowed at base, 4'-5' long and 2|' broad, with thick dark brown valves rugose 

 and pitted on the surface, its axis obovoid 3' or 4' long, l'-l|' thick, dark red-brown, 



