ARALIACE^E 



777 



incurved at apex; testa coriaceous, slightly pitted; hilum basal; cotyledons thick; radicle 

 short, turned toward the hilum. 



Tetrazygia with 14 species is confined to the West Indies and southern Florida where 

 one species has been discovered, the only tree of the great family of the Melastomacese 

 found in the United States. 



The generic name is from r^rpa and vyov in allusion to the often 4-parted flowers. 



1. Tetrazygia bicolor Cogn. 



Leaves oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, gradually narrowed and rounded at base, 3-nerved, 

 entire, undulate and slightly thickened on the revolute margins, dark green on the upper 

 surface, paler on the lower surface, 3'-4f long and l'-lf wide; petioles stout, f'-l' in 



Fig. 698 



length. Flowers appearing from March to May, $' in diameter, short-stalked, in open 

 cymose panicles; calyx urceolate, 4 or 5-lobed* the lobes nearly obsolete; petals 4 or 5, 

 oblong-obovate, reflexed after anthesis, white; ovary 3-celled, style surrounded at base 

 by a short sheath 10-toothed at apex. Fruit ripening in late autumn or early winter, 

 oblong to ovoid, conspicuously constricted at apex, ?'- |' in length and \'-^ r in diameter. 



In Florida a shrub, or in the dense woods of the keys of the Everglades a slender tree, 

 often 30 high, with an erect trunk 3' o_ 4' in diameter, covered with thin light gray-brown 

 slightly fissured bark, small spreading branches becoming erect toward their apex and 

 gracefully drooping leaves; or in the sandy soil of open Pine- woods often less than 3 in 

 height. 



Distribution. Florida, on the Everglade Keys, Dade County; on the Bahama Islands 

 and in Cuba. 



L. ARALIACEE. 



Trees, shrubs, or herbs, with watery juice and scaly buds. Leaves alternate, compound 

 or simple, petiolate, with stipules. Flowers in racemose or panicled umbels; parts of the 

 flower in 5's: disk epigynous; ovule solitary, suspended from the apex of the cell, anatropous; 

 raphe ventral, the micropyle superior. Fruit baccate. Seeds, with albumen. 



The Aralia family with fifty-four genera is chiefly tropical, w r ith a few genera extending 

 beyond the tropics into the northern hemisphere, especially into North America and east- 

 ern Asia. The widely distributed and largely extratropical genus Aralia is represented by 



