658 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



few-flowered panicles 5 '-6' long and 2f '-3' broad, the staminate and pistillate flowers on 

 different individuals. Fruit produced very sparingly, about |' long, on stems 2'-3' in 

 length; the sterile pedicels becoming l|'-2' long at maturity and covered with short not 

 very abundant rather inconspicuous pale purple or brown hairs; seed kidney-shaped, pale 

 brown, about -fa' long. 



A tree, 25-35 high, with a straight trunk occasionally 12'-14' in diameter, usually 

 dividing 12-14 from the ground into several erect stems separating into wide-spreading 

 often slightly pendulous branches, and slender branchlets purple when they first appear, 

 soon becoming green, bright red-brown and covered with small white lenticels and marked 

 by large prominent leaf-scars during their first winter, and dark orange-colored in their 

 second year. Winter-buds $' long, and covered with thin dark red-brown scales. Bark of 

 the trunk ' thick, light gray, furrowed, and broken on the surface into thin oblong scales. 



Fig. 595 



Wood light, soft, rather coarse-grained, bright clear rich orange color, with thin nearly 

 white sap wood; largely used locally for fence-posts and very durable in contact with the 

 soil; yielding a clear orange-colored dye. 



Distribution. Banks of the Ohio River, Owensboro, Daviess County, Kentucky (E. J. 

 Palmer}', on the Cheat Mountains, eastern Tennessee; near Hunts ville, Madison County, 

 Alabama; valley of White River in Stone and Taney Counties, southern Missouri; near 

 Cotter, Baxter County, and Van Buren, Crawford County, Arkansas, and eastern Okla- 

 homa; valleys of the upper Guadalupe and Medina Rivers, western Texas; usually only 

 in small isolated groves or thickets scattered along the sides of rocky ravines or dry slopes: 

 very abundant as a small shrub and spreading over many thousand acres of the mountain 

 canons, and high hillsides in the neighborhood of Spanish Pass, Kendall County, Texas. 



Occasionally cultivated in the eastern United States and rarely in Europe: hardy as far 

 north as eastern Massachusetts. 



3. METOPIUM P. Br. 



Trees or shrubs, with naked buds, fleshy roots, and milky exceedingly caustic juice. 

 Leaves unequally pinnate, persistent; leaflets coriaceous, lustrous, long-petiolulate. Flow- 

 ers dioecious, yellow-green, on short stout pedicels, in narrow erect axillary clusters at the 

 ends of the branches, with minute acute deciduous bracts and bractlets, the males and 

 females on different trees; calyx-lobes semiorbicular, about half as long as the ovate obtuse 

 petals; stamens 5, inserted under the margin of the disk; filaments shorter than the anthers, 

 minute and rudimentary in the pistillate flower; ovary ovoid, sessile, minute in the stami- 



