MYRSINACE.E 



805 



at apex, gradually narrowed below, entire, with thickened slightly revolute margins, thick 

 and coriaceous, yellow-green, nearly veinless, with a very obscure midrib, covered on the 

 lower surface with pale dots, l'-S' long and |'-T wide; persistent on the branches until 

 the appearance of the new leaves the following year; petioles short, stout, abruptly en- 

 larged at base. Flowers appearing in Florida from November until June, f ' in diameter, 

 pale yellow, fragrant, on slender club-shaped pedicels %' long from the axils of minute ovate 

 coriaceous, reddish bracts slightly ciliate on the margins, in terminal and axillary many- 

 flowered glabrous racemes 2'-3' long; sepals ovate-orbicular, obtuse; corolla salverform, f 

 broad, the lobes longer than the tube; stamens shorter than the staminodia. Fruit ripening 

 in the autumn, \' in diameter, orange-red when fully ripe; seeds light brown. 



A tree, 12-15 high, with a straight trunk 6'-7' in diameter, stout rigid spreading 

 branches forming a compact regular round-topped head, and slightly many-angled branch- 

 lets yellow-green or light orange-colored and coated with short soft pale ferrugineous pu- 

 bescence when they first appear, terete, darker and sometimes reddish brown and marked 

 in their second year by orbicular depressed conspicuous leaf-scars and by many scat- 

 tered pale lenticels, becoming glabrous and red-brown or ashy gray the following season. 

 Winter-buds axillary, minute, nearly globose, immersed in the bark. Bark of the trunk 



Fig. 718 



thin, smooth, blue-gray, and usually more or less marked by pale or nearly white blotches. 

 Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, rich brown, beautifully marked by darker medullary 

 fays. 



Distribution. Florida, dry coral soil in the immediate neighborhood of the shore, Gas- 

 parilla Island, on the west coast to the southern keys, and to the borders of the Ever- 

 glades; rare but most abundant and of its largest size in Florida on the Marquesas Keys; 

 on the Bahama Islands and in Cuba and Jamaica. 



LV. MYRSINACE^E. 



Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, alternate entire coriaceous punctate leaves, without 

 stipules. Flowers regular, perfect or dimorphous; calyx persistent under the fruit; corolla, 

 without staminodia, glandular-punctate; stamens inserted on the corolla, as many as and 

 opposite its lobes; ovary 1-celled, with an undivided style and a minute terminal stigma; 

 ovules peltate, immersed in the fleshy central placenta, amphitropous. Fruit a drupe. 

 Seed solitary, globose, with copious cartilaginous or corneous albumen; seed-coat mem- 

 branaceous. 



A tropical family of thirty genera, with two arborescent species reaching the shores of 

 southern Florida. 



