EBENACE^E 823 



not more than 12-25 high, with a trunk 16'-30' in diameter and rather stouter branchlets 

 densely villose-pubescent sometimes for two or three years, or becoming glabrate at the 

 end of their first season. Hills near Allenton, St. Louis County, and on the western slopes 

 of the Ozark Mountains and the adjacent prairies of southeastern Missouri and prairies of 

 northwestern Arkansas, eastern Kansas and Oklahoma. In Dade County, Florida, Dio- 

 spyros virginiana is replaced by the var. Mosieri Sarg. with smaller staminate flowers, nearly 

 globose fruit with rather less compressed dark chestnut-brown lustrous only slightly rugose 

 seeds. A small tree with slightly fissured light gray bark. 



Several named varieties of Diospyros virginiana are distinguished and cultivated by 

 pomologists. 



2. Diospyros texana Scheele. Black Persimmon. Chapote. 



Leaves oblong-cuneate to obovate, rounded and often retuse at apex and cuneate at 

 base, covered below when they unfold with thick -pale tomentum and above with 

 scattered long white hairs, and at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark green and lustrous, 



Fig. 731 



glabrous or puberulous on the upper surface, paler and pubescent on the lower surface, 

 f'-lj' long and nearly 1' wide, with a broad midrib and about 4 pairs of arcuate pri- 

 mary veins and reticulate veinlets; unfolding in February and March,. and falling during 

 the following winter without change of color; petioles short, thick, and hairy. Flowers ap- 

 pearing in early spring when the leaves are about one third grown, on branches of the previ- 

 ous year; staminate on slender drooping pedicels furnished near the middle with minute 

 caducous bractlets, in 1-3-flowered crowded pubescent fascicles; pistillate on stouter 

 club-shaped pedicels, solitary or rarely in pairs; calyx of the staminate flower f ' long and 

 deeply divided into 5 ovate or lanceolate silky-tomentose lobes recurved after the opening 

 of the flower, and much shorter than the corolla f ' long, creamy white, and slightly con- 

 tracted below the 5 short spreading rounded lobes ciliate on the margins; stamens, with 

 glabrous filaments shorter than the corolla, and linear-lanceolate anthers opening at apex 

 only by short slits; pistillate flowers without rudimentary stamens, f long, with oblong 

 acute silky-tomentose calyx-lobes half the length of the pubescent corolla nearly \' . across 

 the short spreading lobes; ovary ovoid, pubescent like the young fruit, ultimately 8-celled. 

 Fruit ripening in August, subglobose, \'-\' in diameter, and 3-8-seeded, surrounded at base 

 by the large thickened leathery calyx sometimes 1' in diameter, with oblong pubescent 

 reflexed lobes, the thick tough black skin inclosing thin sweet insipid juicy dark flesh; 

 seeds triangular, rounded on the back, narrowed and flattened at the pointed apex, \ ' long, 

 about $-' thick, with a bony lustrous light red pitted coat. 



