776 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



than the white concave, obovate to suborbicular erose cilia te sparingly punctate petals. 

 Fruit ellipsoid, red, mostly |'-|' long; seed reniform, usually solitary. 



Fig. 697 '; 



A tree, occasionally 60-70 high, with a trunk 15'-16' in diameter, small erect and 

 spreading smooth gray-brown or reddish brown branches forming a narrow T round-topped 

 head, and slender branchlets covered when they first appear with snowy white tomentum, 

 soon glabrous, and bright or dull reddish brown, and marked in their second year with the 

 nearly orbicular elevated conspicuous scars of fallen leaves. Bark of the trunk thin, 

 smooth, reddish, marked by pale blotches. 



Distribution. Florida, Arch Creek Hummock north of Little River, and on Paradise 

 and Long Keys in the Everglades, Dade County. 



XLDL MELASTOMACE.E. 



Trees, shrubs, or herbs with watery juice. Leaves opposite, rarely verticellate, 3-9- 

 nerved, usually petiolate; stipules 0. Flowers regular, perfect, usually showy, rarely fra- 

 grant, in terminal clusters; calyx usually 4 or 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; 

 petals as many as the lobes of the calyx, inserted on its throat, imbricated or convolute 

 in the bud; stamens as many or twice as many as the petals, inserted in 1 series with them, 

 often inclined or declinate; anthers 2-celled, attached at the base, opening by a terminal 

 pore; ovary 2 or many-celled; style terminal, simple, straight or declinate; stigma capitate, 

 simple or lobed; ovules numerous, minute, anatropous. Fruit capsular or baccate, in- 

 closed in the calyx-tube; seeds minute; testa coriaceous or crustaceous; hilum lateral or 

 basal; embryo without albumen. 



This family with 164 genera and a large number of species is chiefly confined to the 

 tropics, and is most abundant in those of South America. 



1. TETRAZYGIA A. Rich. 



Trees or shrubs, with terete brancljlets. Leaves opposite, petiolate, oblong-ovate to 

 ovate-lanceolate, entire or denticulate, 3-o-nerved, persistent, scurfy, like the young 

 branchlets, peduncles and calyx-tube. Flowers perfect in many-flowered terminal panicles 

 or corymbs; calyx-tube urceolate or globose, adnate to the ovary, the limb constricted 

 above the ovary and dilated below the apex, the lobes short or elongated; petals obovate, 

 obtuse, convolute in the bud; stamens twice as many as the petals; filaments subulate; 

 anthers linear-subulate, erect or slightly recurved, 'attached at base, 2-celled, opening by 

 a minute pore at apex, their connective not extended below the cells: ovary 3-6-celled; 

 style filiform, curved, exserted, surrounded at base by a short sheath 8-10- toothed at apex; 

 ovules indefinite, minute, sessile on an axile placenta. Fruit a 3 or 4-celled berry, crowned 

 by the persistent tube of the calyx; seeds numerous, minute, obpyramidal, thickened and 



