768 



TREES OF XORTH AMERICA 



red, \' in length. Flowers i' long, in hoary-tomentose spikes produced throughout the 

 year from the axils of young leaves and l^'-2' long. Fruit about \' long. 



A tree, 30-60 high, with a trunk 12'-20' in diameter, stout spreading branches forming 

 a narrow round-topped head, and slender glabrous branchlets somewhat angled at first, 

 often marked with minute pale spots and dark red-brown, becoming in their second year 

 terete, light reddish brown or orange color, thickened at the nodes, and marked by con- 

 spicuous ovate leaf-scars; or northward in Florida a low shrub. Bark of the trunk " thick, 



Fig. 689 



brown slightly tinged with red, the surface broken into long ridge-like scales. Wood 

 heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, dark yellow T -brown, with lighter colored sap wood of 10- 

 12 layers of annual growth. The bark contains a large amount of tannic acid and is some- 

 times used in tanning leather, and is astringent and tonic. 



Distribution. Muddy tidal shores of bays and lagoons; southern Florida from Cape 

 Canaveral and Cedar Keys to the southern keys; common and of its largest size in Florida 

 on the shores of Shark River, Monroe County; common in Bermuda, the Bahamas, the An- 

 tilles, tropical Mexico and Central America, tropical South America and western Africa. 



XLVIII. MYRTACEJ2. 



Trees or shrubs abounding in pungent aromatic volatile oil, with minute scaly buds. 

 Leaves opposite, simple, mostly entire, pellucid-punctate, penniveined, persistent, the 

 slender obscure veins arcuate and united within the thickened revolute margins; stipules 

 0. Flowers perfect, regular; calyx 4-5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud, or lid-like 

 and deciduous; petals 2-5, imbricated in the bud, inserted on the margin of the disk, or 0; 

 stamens very numerous, inserted in many ranks with the petals; filaments slender, inflexed 

 in the bud, exserted; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary 2-4- 

 celled; style simple, filiform, crowned with a minute stigma; ovules numerous or 2 or 3 in 

 each cell, attached on a central placenta, anatropous or semianatropous; raphe ventral: 

 micropyle superior. Fruit baccate, crowned with the persistent calyx-lobes, 1-4-seeded. 

 Seeds without albumen; seed-coat membranaceous. 



The Myrtle family with seventy-four genera is chiefly tropical and Australasian, with 

 representatives in southern Europe, extratropical Africa, and extratropical South America. 

 Two genera are represented by small trees in the flora of southern Florida. To this fam- 

 ily, beside the Myrtle, belong the Australian Eucalypti, large and important timber-trees 

 largely planted in California, and the Guava, cultivated in Florida for its fruit. 



