TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



3. BUMELIA Sw. 



Small trees or shrubs, with terete usually spinescent branchlets, scaly buds, and fibrous 

 roots. Leaves often fascicled on spur-like lateral branchlets, conduplicate in the bud, 

 coriaceous or thin, short-petiolate, obovate and obtuse or elliptic, silky-pubescent or to- 

 mentose below, or nearly glabrous, with rather inconspicuous veins arcuate near the en- 

 tire margins and conspicuous reticulate veinlets, deciduous or persistent. Flowers minute, 

 on slender clavate ebracteolate pedicels from the axils of lanceolate acute scarious- decidu- 

 ous bracts, in many-flowered crowded fascicles in the axils of existing leaves or from the 

 leafless nodes of previous years; calyx ovoid to subcampanulate, 5-lobed, the lobes in one 

 series, imbricated in the bud, ovate or oblong, rounded at apex, nearly equal; corolla cam- 

 panulate, white, with 5 spreading broad-ovate lobes rounded at apex and furnished on each 

 side at base with a minute acute ovate or lanceolate appendage; stamens 5; filaments fili- 

 form; anthers ovoid-sagittate, attached on the back below the middle, the cells opening by 

 subextrorse slits; staminodia petal-like, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, entire or obscurely 

 denticulate, flattened or keeled on the back, sometimes furnished at base with a pair of 

 minute scales; ovary hirsute, ovoid to ovoid-conic, gradually or abruptly contracted into a 

 slender short or elongated simple style stigmatic at the acute apex. Fruit oblong-obovoid 

 or globose, black, solitary or in 2 or 3-fruited clusters; flesh thin and dry or succulent. Seed 

 ovoid or oblong, apiculate or rounded at apex, without albumen; seed-coat thick, crusta- 

 ceous, light brown, smooth and shining, folded more or less conspicuously on the back into 

 2 lobes rounded at apex; embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons thick and fleshy, 

 hemispheric, usually consolidated; radicle short, turned toward the basilar or subbasilar 

 orbicular or elliptic hilum. 



Bumelia, with about twenty-five species is confined to the New World, where it is dis- 

 tributed from the southern United States through the West Indies to Mexico, Central 

 America, and Brazil. Of the twelve species in the United States which have been dis- 

 tinguished five are small trees. 



Bumelia produces hard heavy strong wood, that of the North American species contain- 

 ing bands of numerous large open ducts defining the layers of annual growth and connected 

 by conspicuous branched groups of similar ducts, presenting in cross-section a reticulate 

 appearance. 



The generic name is from /Sou/ieXia, a classical name of the Ash-tree. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT SPECIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Lower surface of the leaves pubescent or lanuginose. 



Leaves short-obovate to oblanceolate or elliptic, covered below with pale or ferrugineous 

 silky pubescence. 1. B. tenax (C). 



Leaves oblong-obovate, lanuginose below with ferrugineous or silvery white hairs. 



2. B. lanuginosa (A, C, H). 

 Leaves glabrous or nearly so. 

 Leaves deciduous. 



Leaves oblong-obovate, thick. 3. B. monticola. 



Leaves elliptic to oblanceolate, usually acute or acuminate, thin. 4. B. lycioides (A, C). 



Leaves persistent, obovate; fruit oblong. 5. B. angustifolia (C, D). 



1. Bumelia tenax Willd. Ironwood. Black Haw. 



Leaves oblong-obovate to oblanceolate or elliptic, rarely oval or ovate on leading shoots, 

 rounded or acute at apex, cuneate at base, thin, dark dull green, and finally reticulate- 

 venulose on the upper surface, thickly covered below with soft silky pale or gold-colored 

 pubescence, usually becoming dark rusty brown by midsummer, l'-3' long and 1|'-1|' 

 wide, with slightly thickened and re volute margins and a prominent midrib; turning 

 yellow and falling irregularly during the winter; petioles slender, hairy, grooved, |'-1' in 

 length. Flowers appearing from May in Florida to July in South Carolina, f long, on 



