CELASTRACE^E . 679 



the persistent stigma, often 1 -celled by abortion; flesh thin; stone thick, crustaceous. Seed 

 oblong, suspended; seed-coat membranaceous; albumen thin, fleshy; embryo axile; cotyle- 

 dons ovate, foliaceous; radicle superior, next the hilum. 



Gyminda with a single species is distributed from southern Florida to Trinidad and 

 southern Mexico, and is represented in Central America by what is perhaps a second 

 species. 



The generic name is formed by transposing the first three letters of Myginda, to which 

 tli is plant had been referred. 



1. Gyminda latifolia Urb. 

 Gyminda Grisebachii Sarg. 



Leaves l^'-2' long, '-!' broad, pale yellow-green. Flowers produced on shoots of 

 the year from April to June. Fruit ripening in November, \' long. 



A tree, sometimes 20-25 high, with a trunk rarely more than 0' in diameter, and 

 branchlets becoming terete during their third season and covered with thin slightly 



Fig. 612 



grooved roughened bright red-brown bark. Bark of the trunk thin, brown tinged with 

 red, separating into thin minute scales. Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, dark 

 brown or nearly black, with thick light brown sapwood of 75-80 layers of annual growth. 

 Distribution. Florida, common and generally distributed over the southern keys 

 from the Marquesas group to Upper Matecombe Key; in Cuba, Porto Rico,. Trinidad, 

 and southern Mexico. A form (var. glaucescens, Small.) with smaller less coriaceous 

 very glaucous leaves occurs in Cuba. 



5. SCIL3EFFERIA Jacq. 



Glabrous trees or shrubs, with slender rigid terete branches and small obtuse buds. 

 Leaves alternate, or fascicled on short spur-like branchlets, entire, obovate or spatulate, 

 acute and minutely apiculate or gradually narrowed to the rounded or emarginate apex, 

 cuneate below, persistent, without stipules. Flowers dioecious, pedicellate in axillary 

 clusters from buds covered by scale-like persistent bracts; calyx 4-lobed, the lobes orbic- 

 ular, persistent, much shorter than the 4 hypogynous, oblong, obtuse, white or greenish 

 white petals; stamens 4, hypogynous, inserted under the margin of the small inconspicuous 

 disk opposite the lobes of the calyx, wanting in the pistillate flower; filaments subulate, in- 

 curved; anthers oblong-ovoid; ovary 2-celled, ovoid, sessile, free, rudimentary in the 



