ANACARDIACE^E 657 



rounded and often mucronate at apex, gradually narrowed below into a deltoid or sub- 

 cuneiform base, entire, more or less curved and unequilateral, wine-red when they unfold, 

 and at maturity thin, dark green and sparingly pubescent along the midrib above, pale and 

 glabrous below, nearly sessile or the terminal leaflet raised on a short petiolule, T V~f ' long 

 and about \' wide, with a slender midrib often near one side of the leaflet and reticulate 

 veinlets. Flowers small, without a calyx, appearing just before or with the new leaves, in 

 simple nearly glabrous panicles, their bracts and bractlets ciliate on the margins and wine- 

 red at apex; staminate flowers more crowded than the pistillate, in compact panicles 

 t'-l|' long; anthers reddish yellow or wine color; pistillate flowers in loose panicles 1%'-%%' 

 in length; ovary ovoid or subglobose, two of the three styles with 2-lobed stigmas, the 

 third with a 3-lobed stigma. Fruit oval, dark reddish brown and slightly glaucescent, 

 about I' long and J' broad, usually striate. 



A small tree, occasionally 30 high with a short trunk 15'-18' in diameter, with stout 

 erect and spreading branches forming a head sometimes 30-35 across, and slender 

 slightly pubescent reddish branchlets becoming grayish brown by the end of their first 

 year; more often a large shrub with numerous stout stems. 



Distribution. Texas, limestone cliffs and the rocky bottoms of canons periodically 

 swept by floods, and in deep narrow 7 ravines, along the lower Pecos River and in the 

 neighborhood of its mouth, Valverde County; and in northeastern Mexico. 



2. COT1NUS L. 



Small trees or shrubs, with scaly bark, small acute winter-buds, with numerous imbri- 

 cated scales, fleshy roots, and strong-smelling juice. Leaves simple, petiolate, oval, obo- 

 vate-oblong or nearly orbicular, glabrous or more or less pilose-pubescent, deciduous. 

 Flowers regular, dioecious by abortion or rarely polygamo-dicecious, greenish yellow, on 

 slender pedicels accrescent after the flowering period, mostly abortive and then becoming 

 conspicuously tomentose-villose at maturity, in ample loose terminal or lateral pyramidal 

 or thyrsoidal panicles, the branches from the axils of linear acute or spatulate deciduous 

 bracts; calyx-lobes ovate-lanceolate, obtuse, persistent; disk coherent with the base of the 

 calyx and surrounding the base of the ovary; petals oblong, acute, twice as long as the 

 calyx, inserted under the free margin of the disk opposite its lobes, deciduous; stamens 

 shorter *than the petals, usually rudimentary or wanting in the pistillate flower; ovary 

 sessile, obovoid, compressed, rudimentary in the staminate flower; styles 3, short and 

 spreading from the lateral apex of the ovary; stigmas large, obtuse. Fruit oblong-oblique, 

 compressed, glabrous, conspicuously reticulate-veined, light red-brown, bearing on the 

 side near the middle the remnants of the persistent styles, the outer coat thin and dry; 

 stone thick and bony. 



Cotinus is widely distributed through southern Europe and the Himalayas to central 

 China with a single species, and is represented in the southern United States by one 

 species. 



The Old -World Cotinus cvggygria Scop., the Smoke-tree of gardens, is often cultivated 

 in the United States. 



The generic name is from Kbrivos, the classical name of a tree with red wood. 



1 . Cotinus americanus Nutt. Chittam Wood. 



Leaves oval or obovate, rounded or sometimes slightly emarginate at apex, gradually 

 contracted at base, and entire, with slightly wavy revolute margins, when they unfold 

 light purple and covered below with fine silky white hairs, and at maturity dark green on 

 the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, and puberulous along the under side of the 

 broad midrib and primary veins, 4'-6' long and 2'-3' wide; turning in the autumn brilliant 

 shades of orange and scarlet; petioles stout, ^'-f in length. Flowers appearing late in 

 April or early in May on pedicels \'-\' long, and usually collected 3 or 4 together in loose 

 umbels near the end of the principal branches of puberulous terminal slender long-branched 



