802 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



they unfold, tinged with red, and slightly puberulous, especially on the petiole and mar- 

 gins, and at maturity thin, firm and rigid, light green on the upper surface, pale. on the 

 lower surface, l|'-3' long and %'-l' wide, with a slender yellow midrib and obscure reti- 

 culate veinlets; appearing in May and after the summer rains in September, and per- 

 sistent for at least a year; petioles slender, often 1' in length. Flowers long, with a 

 corolla much contracted in the middle, and a glabrous porulose ovary, opening in May on 

 short stout hairy pedicels from the axils of conspicuous ovate rounded scarious bracts, in 

 rather loose clusters %'-%%' long and broad, their lower branches from the axils of upper 

 leaves. Fruit ripening in October and November, globose or short-oblong, dark orange- 

 red, granulate, $' in diameter, with thin sweetish flesh, and a papery usually incompletely 

 developed stone; seeds compressed, puberulous. 



A tree, 40-50 high, with a tall straight trunk 18'-24' in diameter, stout spreading 

 branches forming a rather compact round-topped head, and thick tortuous divergent 

 branchlets reddish brown and more or less pubescent or light purple, pilose, and covered 

 with a glaucous bloom when they first appear, becoming bright red at the end of their first 

 season, their bark thin, separating freely into thin more or less persistent scales. Winter- 

 buds $' long, red, the two outer scales linear, acuminate a third longer than those of 

 the next rank, acute and apiculate and ridged on the back. Bark of young stems and 

 of the branches thin, smooth, dark red, exfoliating in large thin scales, becoming on old 

 trunks f '-' thick, irregularly broken by longitudinal furrows and divided into square 

 appressed plate-like light gray or nearly white scales faintly tinged with red on the sur- 

 face. Wood heavy, close-grained, soft and brittle, light brown tinged with red, with 

 lighter colored sapwood of 30-40 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Dry gravelly benches at altitude of 6000-8000 on the Santa Catalina 

 and Santa Rita Mountains, southern Arizona, and on the San Luis and Animas Moun- 

 tains of southwestern New Mexico (Grant County); on the Sierra Nevada of Chihuahua. 



7. VACCINIUM L. 



Shrubs or rarely small trees, with slender branchlets, and fibrous roots. Leaves thin or 

 coriaceous, deciduous or persistent. Flowers small, on bibracteolate pedicels, in many- 

 branched axillary racemes, or solitary, their bracts small or foliaceous; calyx-tube adnate 

 to the ovary, 4-5-lobed, the lobes valvate in the bud, persistent; corolla epigynous, 4 or 

 5-toothed, the teeth imbricated in the bud, urceolate-campanulate; stamens 8-10, inserted 

 on the base of the corolla under the thick obscurely lobed epigynous disk; filaments filiform, 

 free, usually hirsute; anthers awned on the back, the cells produced upward into erect 

 spreading tubes dehiscent by a terminal pore; ovary inferior, 4 or 5-celled, the cells some- 

 times imperfectly divided by the development from the back of a false partition; style fili- 

 form, erect; stigma minute; ovules attached to the interior angle of the cell by a 2-lipped 

 placenta, anatropous. Fruit a berry crowned with the calyx-limb, 4 or 5 or imperfectly 

 8 or 10-celled, the cells many-seeded. Seed minute, compressed, ovoid or reniform; seed- 

 coat crustaceous; embryo clavate, minute, surrounded by fleshy albumen, axile, erect; 

 cotyledons ovate; radicle terete, turned toward the hilum. 



Vaccinium with about one hundred species is distributed through the boreal and temper- 

 ate regions of the northern hemisphere, and occurs within the tropics at high altitudes 

 north and south of the equator. Of the twenty-five or thirty species which occur in North 

 America one is small trees. The fruits of many of the species are edible, the most valu- 

 able being the North American Vaccinium macrocarpum L., the Cranberry. 



Vaccim'um is the classical name of one of the Old World species. 



1. Vaccinium arboreum Marsh. Farkleberry. Sparkleberry. 



Leaves obovate, oblong-oval or occasionally orbicular, acute, or rounded and apiculate 

 at apex, gradually or abruptly cuneate at base, obscurely glandular-dentate or entire, with 

 thickened slightly revolute margins, light red and more or less pilose or puberulous when 

 they unfold, and at maturity coriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, paler below, gla- 



