ANACAJRDIACE^E 



655 



or nearly black, ' in diameter, covered with thin dry flesh, and pendent on a slender stem 

 1' or more in length; seeds ovoid. 



A tree, occasionally 20-30 high, with a trunk 6'-8' in diameter and often irregularly 

 ridged, the rounded ridges spreading near the surface of the ground into broad buttresses, 

 slender erect branches forming a narrow open oblong head, and slender upright branchlets 

 light green more or less deeply shaded with red when they first appear, becoming in their 

 first winter light gray-brown faintly tinged with red and roughened by numerous oblong 

 pale lenticels, ultimately ashy gray and marked at the end of their second year by the 



Fig. 593 



semiorbicular elevated leaf-scars displaying the ends of 4 fibro-vascular bundle-scars 

 superposed in pairs. Winter-buds ovoid, obtuse, covered with chestnut-brown scales, 

 about T V long. Bark of the trunk dark red-brown, about -j^' thick, separating into large 

 thin scales, in falling displaying the light brown inner bark. Wood very heavy, hard, 

 close-grained, rich dark brown streaked with yellow, with thick bright yellow sapwood; 

 in Florida occasionally manufactured into canes, and used as fuel. 



Distribution. Florida, 'common in low woods from the shores of Bay Biscay ne to the 

 Everglade Keys, Dade County, and on many of the southern keys to those of the Marque- 

 sas group; on the Bahama Islands, and on many of the Antilles. 



XXXI. ANACARDIACE^. 



Trees or shrubs, with terete pithy branchlets, resinous juice, and alternate simple or 

 pinnate leaves, without stipules, and scaly or naked buds. Flowers regular, minute, 

 dioecious, polygamo-dio3cious, or polygamo-monoecious; calyx-lobes and petals 5, im- 

 bricated in the bud or 0; stamens as many as the petals and alternate and inserted with 

 them on the margin or under an hypogynous annular fleshy slightly 5-lobed disk; filaments 

 filiform; anthers oblong, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary 1-celled; 

 styles 1-3; ovule solitary, suspended from the apex of a slender funicle rising from the 

 base of the cell, anatropous; micropyle superior; styles 3, united or spreading; stigmas 

 terminal. Fruit drupaceous. Seed without albumen; seed-coat thin and membranaceous ; 

 embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons flat, accumbent on the short radicle. 



The Sumach family with some sixty genera is mostly confined to the warmer parts of 

 the earth's surface and contains the Mango, Pistacia, and other important trees. In the 

 flora of the United States four genera have arborescent representatives. 



