818 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



1 . Chiysophyllum olivif orme Lam. Satin-leaf. 



Leaves revolute in the bud, oval, acute or contracted into a short broad point or some- 

 times rounded at apex, abruptly cuneate at base, thick and coriaceous, bright blue-green 

 on the upper surface and covered on the lower surface and on the petiole with brilliant 

 copper-colored pubescence, 2'-3' long and l|'-2' wide, with a broad prominent midrib deeply 

 impressed on the upper side and numerous straight veins arcuate near the margins; petioles 

 stout, |'-f ' in length. Flowers appearing in Florida irregularly throughout the year and 

 often found on a branch with ripe or half-grown fruits, on stout pedicels shorter than the 

 petioles, covered like the calyx with rufous tomentum, in few or many-flowered fascicles in 

 the axils of leaves or at the base of lateral branchlets in those of earlier years; calyx divided 

 nearly to the base into broad rounded lobes rather shorter than the tube of the subrotate 

 white corolla with short spreading rounded lobes; ovary 5-celled, pubescent, gradually 

 contracted into a short style crow r ned by a broad 5-lobed stigma. Fruit usually 1-seeded 

 by abortion, on stems 1' long, usually only a single fruit being produced from a flower- 

 cluster, ovoid or sometimes nearly globose, dark purple, roughened by occasional excres- 

 cences, with a thick tough skin inclosing the juicy sweet mawkish flesh light purple on the 

 exterior, lighter toward the interior, and quite white in the centre; seed narrowed at the 

 ends, \' long, covered with a thin light brown coat closely invested with a white glutinous 

 aril-like pulpy mass. 



A tree, 25-30 high, with a tall straight trunk sometimes a foot in diameter, upright 

 branches forming a compact oblong head, and slender slightly zigzag branchlets coated 

 when they first appear with ferrugineous tomentum, becoming in their second year light 



Fig. 728 



red-brown or ashy gray and covered with small pale elevated circular lenticels; in sandy 

 soil under the shade of Pine-trees in the Everglade Keys a shrub 6 high or less. Bark of 

 the trunk $' thick, light brown slightly tinged with red, and broken by shallow fissures into 

 large irregularly shaped plates separating on the surface into small thin scales. Wood 

 very heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, light brown shaded with red, with thin lighter 

 colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Florida, rich tummocks, from Mosquito Inlet on the east coast to the 

 Everglade Keys, Dade County and to the southern keys, and on the west coast from the 

 shores of the Caloosahatchie River to the neighborhood of Cape Sable; local and nowhere 

 common; on the Bahama Islands, and in Cuba, Porto Rico and Jamaica. 



