EUPHORBIACE.E 649 



marked near the apex by the dark scars left by the falling seeds; seeds f ' long, almost 

 square, thickened at base and nearly one fourth as long as their ovate rugose red-brown 

 wings rounded or truncate at apex and gradually contracted below. 



A tree, in Florida rarely more than 40-50 high or with a trunk exceeding 2 in diameter, 

 and slender glabrous angled branchlets covered during their first season with pale red- 

 brown bark, becoming lighter or gray faintly tinged with red and thickly covered with 

 lenticels during their second year; much larger in the West Indies. Winter-buds about 

 ' long, with broad-ovate minutely apiculate loosely imbricated light red scales. Bark 

 of the trunk in Florida \'-\' thick, with a dark red-brown surface broken into short 

 broad rather thick scales. Wood heavy, exceedingly hard and strong, close-grained, very 



Fig. 589 



durable, rich red-brown, becoming darker with age and exposure, with thin yellow sapwood 

 of about 20 layers of annual growth; the most esteemed of all woods for cabinet-making, 

 and also largely used in the interior finish of houses and railroad cars, and formerly in ship 

 and boatbuilding. The bark is bitter and astringent and has been used as a substitute 

 for quinine in the treatment of intermittent fevers. 



Distribution. Florida, hummocks, shores of Bay Biscayne on the Everglade Keys and 

 near Flamingo on White Water Bay, Dade County, on Elliotts Key, Key Largo and 

 Upper Matacombe Key; rare and now nearly exterminated except in the region of Cape 

 Sable; on the Bahama and many of the West Indian islands. 



XXX. EUPHORBIACE^E. 



Trees, shrubs, or herbs, with acrid juice, and alternate stipular leaves. Flowers 

 monoecious or dioecious; calyx 3-6-lobed or parted, the divisions imbricated in the bud, 

 or wanting; corolla 0; stamens 2 or 3, or as many or twice as many as the calyx-lobes; 

 anthers 2-celled, opening longitudinally; ovules 1 or 2 hi each cell, suspended, anatropous; 

 raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit a drupe or capsule. Seeds albuminous; cotyle- 

 dons flat, much longer than the superior radicle. 



The Euphorbia family, widely distributed over tropical and temperate regions, with 

 some one hundred and thirty genera and over three thousand species, is represented in the 

 United States by three arborescent genera, with only five species, and by many shrubby 

 herbaceous and annual plants. 



