NYSSACE^E 



783 



first appear with rufous tomentum, light reddish brown or green tinged with red and pu- 

 berulous during their first summer, turning gray or reddish brown in their first winter, and 

 marked by large lunate or nearly triangular leaf-scars displaying the ends of 3 groups of 

 fibro- vascular bundles; often a shrub, with numerous slender clustered diverging stems. 

 Winter-buds obtuse, f ' long, with ovate apiculate imbricated scales rounded on the back 

 and clothed with thick hoary tomentum, those of the inner ranks becoming at maturity 



Fig. 702 



ovate-oblong or obovate, rounded at apex, bright red, and ^'-f ' long. Bark of the trunk 

 about I' thick, irregularly fissured, with a dark brown surface broken into thick appressed 

 persistent plate-like scales. Wood light, soft, tough, not strong, white, with thin hardly 

 distinguishable sapwood of about 10 layers of annual growth. A preserve with an agree- 

 able subacid flavor, known as Ogeechee limes, is sometimes made from the fruit in Georgia 

 and South Carolina. The flowers abound in nectar, and are much visited by bees. 



Distribution. Deep often inundated river swamps or their borders; South Carolina in 

 the neighborhood of the coast, through the valley of the lower Ogeechee River, Georgia; in 

 northern and in western Florida to the mouth of the Choctawhatchee River (R. H. Harper), 

 and in the valley of the lower Apalachicola River; rare and local. 



4. Nyssa aquatica Marsh. Cotton Gum. Tupelo Gum. 



Leaves oblong-ovate, acute or acuminate and often long-pointed at apex, cuneate, 

 rounded, or subcordate at base, entire or remotely and irregularly angulate-toothed, the 

 teeth often tipped with a long slender mucro, when they unfold light red and coated below 

 and on the petioles with pale tgrnentum and pubescent above, especially on the broad thick 

 midrib, and at maturity thick and firm, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, pale 

 and more or less downy-pubescent on the lower surface, 5'-7' long and 2'-4' wide, with 

 10-12 pairs of primary veins forked near the margins and connected by conspicuous cross 

 veins; petioles stout, grooved, hairy, enlarged at base, l|'-2' in length. Flowers appear- 

 ing in March and April on a long slender hairy peduncle from the axil of an inner scale of the 

 terminal bud; staminate in dense capitate clusters, their peduncle furnished near the mid- 

 dle and occasionally at apex with long linear ciliate bractlets; calyx-tube cup-shaped, ob- 

 scurely 5-toothed, one third as long as the oblong erect petals rounded at apex and much 

 shorter than the stamens; pistillate solitary, surrounded by 2-4 strap-shaped scarious cili- 

 ate bractlets often V long and more or less united below into an involucral cup; calyx-tube 

 oblong and much longer than the ovate minute spreading petals; stamens included, with 

 small mostly fertile anthers; style stout, tapering, reflexed above the middle, and re volute 

 into a close coil. Fruit ripening early in the autumn, on slender drooping stalks 3'-4' in 



