676 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



rounded above, narrowed below, \' long, with a thin light chestnut-brown wrinkled coat 

 and a thin scarlet aril. 



A tree, rarely 20-25 high, with a trunk 4'-6' in diameter, spreading branches, and 

 slender terete branchlets dark purple-brown at first, becoming lighter colored in their 

 second season, often covered with small crowded lenticels, and marked by prominent 

 leaf-scars, occasionally slightly or on vigorous shoots rarely broadly wing-margined; more 

 often a shrub, 6-10 tall. Winter-buds f long, acute, with narrow purple apiculate 



Fig. 609 



scales scarious on the margins and covered by a glaucous bloom. Bark thin, ashy gray, 

 and covered by thin minute scales. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, w y hite tinged 

 with orange. 



Distribution. Borders of woods in rich soil ; western New York to southern Minnesota, 

 central Iowa, southeastern South Dakota, northwestern Nebraska, central Kansas, Okla- 

 homa to the valley of the Canadian River (near Minton, Caddo County), southern Ar- 

 kansas and eastern Texas (Dallas County), and southward to eastern Tennessee, Jackson 

 County, Alabama, and western Florida; in the valley of the upper Missouri River, Mon- 

 tana; arborescent only in southern Arkansas and Texas. 



Occasionally cultivated as an ornament of gardens in the eastern United States and in 

 Europe. 



2. MAYTENUS Molina. 



Small unarmed trees or shrubs with slender branchlets and minute buds. Leaves 

 alternate often 'in two ranks, coriaceous, petiolate, persistent; stipules minute, deciduous. 

 Flowers polygamous, small, white, yellow or red, axillary, solitary or in cymose or fas- 

 cicled clusters; calyx 5-lobed; petals 5, spreading; stamens 5, inserted under the orbicular 

 disk, with undulate margins; filaments filiform; anthers ovoid-cordate; ovary immersed 

 and confluent with the disk, 2-4-celled; style or columnar; stigma 2-4-lobed, usually 

 sessile; ovules erect, solitary or in pairs in each cell. Fruit capsular, coriaceous, 2-4-valved; 

 seed erect, surrounded at base or entirely in a pulpy aril; testa crustaceous; albumen 

 fleshy or wanting; cotyledons foliaceous. 



Maytenus with some seventy species is widely distributed in the tropical and subtropi- 

 cal regions of America from southern Florida, where one species occurs, to Brazil and 

 Chile. 



The Chilean Maytenus boaria Molina, a handsome tree of graceful habit, is occasionally 

 cultivated in California. 



The generic name is from May ten, the Chilean name of one of the species. 



