AQUIFOLIACE^E 671 



about T V thick, dark gray, thickly covered and roughened by lenticels. Wood light, soft, 

 close-grained, not strong, pale brown, with thick nearly w r hite sapwood. 



Distribution. Cold swamps and on their borders, in rich moist soil, or occasionally on 

 the high sandy banks of Pine-barren streams; southeastern Virginia southward in the im- 

 mediate neighborhood of the coast to the shores of Bay Biscayne and the Everglade Keys, 

 Dade County, and in the interior of the peninsular in Polk and De Soto Counties, Florida, 

 and along the Gulf coast to western Louisiana; on the Bahama Islands and in Cuba 

 (var. latifolia Ait.); now r here abundant on the Atlantic coast; most common in western 

 Florida and southern Alabama; passing through forms with elongated narrow leaves (var. 

 angustifolia Ait., the common form of southern Alabama) into the variety myrtifolia 

 Sarg. This is a low shrub or occasionally a slender wide-branched tree, with pale nearly 

 white bark, puberulous branchlets, and crowded generally entire mucronate leaves ^'-1' 

 long, I' wide, with strongly reflexed margins, a very short petiole, and a broad prominent 

 midrib; an inhabitant of Cypress-swamps and Pine-barren ponds or their margins, in the 

 neighborhood of the coast, North Carolina to Louisiana. 



Ilex Cassine is occasionally cultivated in Europe. 



3. Ilex vomitoria Ait. Cassena. Yaupon. 



Leaves elliptic to elliptic-oblong, obtuse, coarsely and remotely crenulate-serrate, cori- 

 aceous, dark green and lustrous above, pale and opaque below, l'-2' long and i'-l' wide, 

 persistent for two or three years, generally falling just before the appearance of the new 



Fig. 605 



growth of their third season; petioles short, broad, and grooved. Flowers on slender club- 

 shaped glabrous pedicels, wfth minute bractlets at the base, in short glabrous cymes on 

 branchlets of the previous year, those of the staminate plant short-stemmed and many- 

 flowered, those of the pistillate plant sessile and 1 or 2-flowered; calyx-lobes rounded, ob- 

 tuse, often slightly ciliate; ovary contracted below the broad flat stigma. Fruit produced 

 in great abundance, on stems not more than j' long, ripening late in the autumn or in early 

 winter, soon deciduous, or persistent until spring, scarlet, nearly globose, about \' in diam- 

 eter; nutlets obtuse at the ends, and prominently few-ribbed on the back and sides. 



A small much-branched tree, 20-25 high, with a slender often inclining trunk rarely 

 more than 6' in diameter, and stout branchlets standing at right angles with the stem, 

 slightly angled and puberulous during their first season, becoming glabrous or nearly gla- 

 brous, terete and pale gray in their second year; generally a tall shrub, with numerous stems 

 forming dense thickets. Winter-buds minute, obtuse, with narrow dark brown or often 

 nearly black scales. Bark of the trunk T y-r|' thick, the light red-brown surface broken 



