754 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



horizontal spreading branches forming a compact round-headed top. Bark of the trunk 

 J' thick, light gray, broken on the surface into numerous short thick scales rarely more 

 than 2'-3' long and about twice as thick as the pale yellow aromatic inner bark. Wood 



Fig. 679 



very heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, dark red-brown, with thick light 

 brown or yellow sapwood of 25-30 layers of annual growth. The bitter acrid inner bark 

 is the wild cinnamon bark of commerce. It has a pleasant cinnamon-like odor and is an 

 aromatic stimulant and tonic. 



Distribution. Florida, region of Cape Sable, Munroe County (Flamingo [A. A. Eaton], 

 East Cape, Madeira Hammock), and widely distributed on the southern keys, usually 

 growing in the shade of other trees; on the Bahama Islands and many of the Antilles. 



XLIH. KCEBERLINIACEJE. 



An intricately branched almost leafless tree or shrub, with thin red-brown scaly bark, 

 stout alternate glabrous branchlets covered with pale green bark and terminating in a sharp 

 rigid straight or slightly curved spine. Leaves minute, early deciduous, alternate, narrow- 

 obovate, rounded at apex. Flowers perfect, on slender club-shaped puberulous pedicels 

 from the axils of minute scarious deciduous bracts, in short umbel-like racemes below the 

 end of the branches; calyx of 3 or 5 minute sepals imbricated in the bud, deciduous; petals 

 4, convolute in the bud, hypogynous, obovate or oblong, subunguiculate, white, much 

 longer than the sepals; disk 0; stamens 8, free, hypogynous, as long as the petals; filaments 

 thickened in the middle, subulate at the ends; anthers oval, attached on the back near the 

 base, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary ovoid, 2-celled, contracted at base 

 into a short stalk and above into a simple subulate style; stigma terminal, obtuse, slightly 

 emarginate; ovules numerous, adnate in several series to the fleshy placenta, horizontal or 

 dependent, anatropous. Fruit a 2-celled berry, black at maturity, subglobose, tipped with 

 the remnants of the pointed style; flesh thin and succulent, the cells 1 or 2-seeded by abor- 

 tion. Seed vertical, circinate-cochleate; seed-coat crustaceous, slightly rugose, striate: 

 albumen thin; embryo annular; cotyledons semiterete; the radicle ascending. 



The family is represented by a single genus. 



1. KCEBERLINIA Zucc. 



Characters of the family. 



Kreberlinia with one species is North American. 



The generic name is in honor of L. Koeberlin, a German botanist. 



1. Kosberlinia spinosa Zucc. 



Leaves not more than ' long. Flowers appearing in May and June, about |' in diam- 

 eter. Fruit iV-i' in diameter. 



