816 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



f in length; flesh thick; seed short-oblong to subglobose, rounded at apex, nearly ' long, 

 with a pale conspicuous hilum. 



A tree, 25-30 high, with a short trunk rarely more than 6' in diameter, stout flexible 

 branches usually unarmed or furnished with short stout slightly curved spines occasionally 



Fig. 726 



developing into leafy spinescent branches, and short thick spur-like lateral branchlets 

 slightly puberulous when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous, light red-brown, rather 

 lustrous, and marked by numerous pale lenticels, and in their second year dark or light 

 brown tinged with red or ashy gray. Winter-buds minute, obtuse, nearly immersed in the 

 bark, with pale dark brown glabrous scales. Bark of the trunk thin, light red-brown, the 

 generally smooth surface broken into small thin persistent scales. Wood heavy, hard, not 

 strong, close-grained, light brown or yellow, with thick lighter colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Usually in low moist soil on the borders of swamps and streams; rocky 

 bluffs of the Ohio River near Cannelton, Perry County, southern Indiana, southern Illinois 

 (Hardin, Pope and Pulaski Counties), to southeastern Missouri (Butler County) and to 

 western Kentucky, western and central Tennessee, central Mississippi and northern Louisi- 

 ana (West Feliciana Parish) ; and through western Arkansas to the coast region of eastern 

 Texas (Beaumont, Jefferson County, and Columbia, Brazoria County); central Alabama; 

 Florida southward to St. Mark's, Wakulla County, and to Taylor, Alachua and Volusia 

 Counties, and to northwestern Georgia (Catoosa County), and the valley of the Savan- 

 nah River in Georgia and South Carolina, and northward through eastern North Caro- 

 lina to southeastern Virginia (Norfolk County). 



5. Bumelia angustifolia Nutt. Ants' Wood. Downward Plum. 



Leaves obovate, rounded at apex, and gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, with 

 slightly thickened revolute margins, glabrous, thick and coriaceous, pale blue-green on the 

 upper surface, paler on the lower surface, I'-l^' long and j'-lj' wide, with a pale slender 

 midrib, and very obscure veins and veinlets; usually persistent on the branches until the end 

 of their second winter; petioles stout, grooved, rarely j' in length. Flowers generally ap- 

 pearing in October and November, on slender glabrous pedicels seldom more than \' in 

 length, in few or many-flowered crowded fascicles; calyx glabrous, divided nearly to the 

 base into narrow-ovate lobes rounded at apex and half as long as the divisions of the corolla 

 furnished with linear-lanceolate appendages as long as the ovate acute denticulate stami- 

 nodia; ovary narrow-ovoid, slightly hairy at base only, gradually contracted into an elon- 

 gated style. Fruit ripening in the spring, on slender drooping stems, usually 1 fruit only 



