STERCULIACE.E 749 



Fig. 675 



of Charleston, South Carolina, and on Colonel's Island near the mouth of the North New- 

 port and Medway Rivers, near Dunham, Liberty County, Georgia. 



XL. STERCULIACEJE. 



Trees or shrubs, with bitter astringent juice, mucilaginous bark, and alternate simple 

 leaves, with stipules. Flowers perfect, regular; calyx of 5 sepals, imbricated in the bud; 

 corolla (in Fremontia)', anthers extorse; pistil of 5 united carpels; ovary 5-celled; styles 

 united; ovules anatropous. 



A family of about fifty genera mostly confined to the tropics. Its most important species, 

 Theobroma Cacao L., of the West Indies, produces chocolate from the cotyledons. Firmi- 

 ana simplex F. N. Meyer, of this family and a native of southern China, is often planted as 

 an ornamental tree in the southern states, where it has sometimes become naturalized, 

 and in California. 



1. FREMONTIA Torr. 



A tree or shrub, with stellate pubescence and naked buds. Leaves broad-ovate, lobed, 

 thick, prominently veined, usually rufous on the lower surface, persistent; stipules minute, 

 deciduous. Flowers solitary, terminal or opposite the leaves, pedicellate, subtended by 

 3 or rarely 5 minute caducous bracts; calyx subcampanulate, hypogynous, deeply 5-lobed, 

 the lobes imbricated in the bud, petaloid, yellow, spreading, obovate, often mucronate, 

 1' long, the 3 outer a little smaller than the others, pubescent on the outer surface, with a 

 hairy cavity at the base of tjie inner surface; corolla 0; stamens 5; filaments alternate with 

 the sepals, united to the middle into a column; anthers oblong-linear, incurved at the ends, 

 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary 5-celled, the cells opposite the sepals; style 

 filiform, elongated, terminated by an acute undivided stigmatic point; ovules numerous in 

 each cell, horizontal. Fruit an ovoid acuminate 4 or 5-valved loculicidally dehiscent cap- 

 sule densely coated with long matted hairs, the inner surface of the cells villose-pubescent. 

 Seeds oval; seed-coat crustaceous, puberulous, w r ith a small fleshy marginal deciduous 

 ariloid appendage on the chalaza; embryo straight, in thick fleshy albumen; cotyledons 

 oblong, foliaceous, three or four times longer than the short radicle. 



Fremontia, named in honor of John C. Fremont, the distinguished explorer of west- 

 ern North America, is represented by a single species. 



