798 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



1 . Lyonia ferruginea Nutt. 

 Xolisma ferruginea Hell. 



Leaves cuneate-obovate, rhombic-obovate or cuneate-oblong, acute or rounded at apex, 

 usually tipped with a cartilaginous mucro, gradually narrowed at base, and entire, with 

 thickened revolute margins, scurfy when they unfold, and at maturity thick and firm, pale 

 green, smooth and shining or sometimes obscurely lepidote above, covered below with 

 ferrugineous or pale scales, l'-3' long and i'-l|' wide, with a prominent midrib and primary 

 veins; appearing in early spring and pecsistent until the summer or autumn of their second 

 year; petioles short, thick, much enlarged at base. Flowers |' in diameter, chiefly pro- 

 duced on branches of the year or occasionally on those of the previous year, opening from 

 February until April when the leaves are fully grown, on slender recurved pedicels much 

 shorter than the leaves, in crowded axillary short-stemmed or sessile ferrugineous-lepidote 

 fascicles, with minute acute deciduous bracts and bractlets; calyx 5-lobed, with acute lobes, 

 covered on the outer surface with ferrugineous scales, and about one third as long as the 

 white pubescent corolla, with short reflexed acute teeth slightly thickened and ciliate on 



Fig. 712 



the margins; filaments shortened by a conspicuous geniculate fold in the middle; ovary 

 coated with thick white tomentum; style stout, as long or a little longer than the corolla. 

 Fruit on a stout erect stem, oblong, 5-angled, \' long; seed pale brown. 



A tree, occasionally 20-30 high, with a slender crooked or often prostrate trunk some- 

 times 10' in diameter, thin rigid divergent branches forming a tall oblong irregular head, 

 and slender branchlets coated when they first appear with minute ferrugineous scales and 

 covered in their second year with glabrous or pubescent light or dark red-brown bark 

 smooth or exfoliating in small thin scales. Winter-buds minute, acute, and covered with 

 ferrugineous scales. Bark of the trunk %'-\' thick, divided into long narrow ridges by 

 shallow longitudinal furrows, reddish brown and separating into short thick scales. Wood 

 heavy, hard, close-grained although not strong, light brown tinged with red, with thick 

 lighter colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Hummocks and sandy woods; coast region of South Carolina and 

 Georgia, northern Florida to the centre of the peninsula, the shores of Tampa Bay, and to 

 the neighborhood of Apalachicola (Franklin County) ; in the United States arborescent in 

 the rich soil of the woody hummocks rising in the sandy Pine-covered coast plain, and as a 

 low shrub in the dry sandy sterile soil of Pine-barrens; in the West Indies and Mexico. 



