STYRACE^E . 



slightly obovoid, compressed, !%'-%' long, often nearly 1' wide, with two broad wings and 

 often with 2 or rarely 3 narrow wings between them; stone ellipsoid, l|'-lf long, conspicu- 

 ously ridged, gradually narrowed below into the short slender stipe and above into the 

 thickened pubescent style; seed acuminate at the ends, about f in length. 



A tree, occasionally 30 high, with a short or rarely a tall trunk 8'-10' in diameter, spread- 

 ing branches forming a wide head and slender branchlets light green and more or less 

 thickly covered with pale pubescence when they first appear, usually becoming glabrous, 

 orange color, or reddish brown, lustrous and marked by the large elevated obcordate 

 leaf-scars during their first winter, dark red-brown in their second season and dividing the 

 following year into irregular pale longitudinal fissures; more often a shrub, with numerous 

 stout spreading stems. Winter-buds ovoid, obtuse, ^' long, with broad-ovate acute light 

 red pubescent scales, those of the inner ranks becoming strap-shaped, scarious and |' long 

 Bark of the trunk '-' thick, brown tinged with red, and divided by irregular longitudinal 

 often broad fissures, and separating into small thin closely appressed scales Wood light, 

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



Distribution. Low wet woods and the borders of swamps and streams; near Savannah 

 (Elliott) and in southwestern Georgia, western Florida (Leon and Gadsden Counties), 

 southern Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to the valley of the lower Neches River, 

 Texas, and to southwestern Arkansas (Miller County). 



Occasionally cultivated in the gardens of the eastern United States and western Europe. 

 Doubtfully hardy in Massachusetts and western New York. 



2. STYRAX L. 



Trees or shrubs, lepidote or stellate-tomentose except on the upper surface of the leaves, 

 with slender terete slightly zigzag branchlets, without a terminal bud, axillary buds, with 

 imbricated scales, and fibrous roots Leaves involute in the bud, entire or slightly serrate. 

 Flowers usually white on short ebracteolate drooping pedicels from the axils of small bracts, 

 in simple or branched usually drooping axillary racemes; calyx cup-shaped, adnate to the 

 base of the ovary or nearly free, the margin truncate, obscurely or conspicuously 5-toothed 

 or rarely 2 or 5-parted; corolla epigynous, campanulate, 5 or rarely 6 or 7-parted, with a 

 short tube usually longer than the lanceolate oblong or spatulate erect and spreading or 

 revolute lobes valvate or imbricated in the bud, stamens 8-13, usually 10, longer than the 

 corolla slightly united below into a ring or short tube; filaments flattened above; cells of the 

 anthers linear parallel, erect; ovary broad-conic, subglobose or depressed, densely villose 

 or rarely glabrous, at first 3-celled, becoming 1-celled or nearly 1-celled after anthesis, 

 crowned by a subulate or thickened style terminating in a small indistinctly 3-lobed or 

 capitate stigma', ovules few or rarely solitary ascending; raphe dorsal, micropyle inferior. 

 Fruit globose or slightly obovoid, drupaceous ; pericarp hard and indehiscent or irregularly 

 3-valved or fleshy and irregularly dehiscent; endocarp glabrous, crustaceous or indurate; 

 seed 1 by abortion or very rarely 2, filling the cavity of the stone, erectj testa membrana- 

 ceous. mostly adherent to the walls of the stone; albumen fleshy or rarely horny; cotyledons 

 usually broad, the elongated terete radicle turned toward the broad basal hilum. 



Styrax is widely distributed in warm and tropical countries except in tropical and south 

 Africa and in Australasia, extending northward into the southeastern United States and to 

 California, southern Europe s central and western China and central Japan. Of nearly one 

 hundred species which are now distinguished five are found within the territory of the 

 United States; one of these occasionally becomes a small tree. 



Storax and benzoin, aromatic resinous balsams, are obtained from Styrax officinale L. 

 of southern Europe and Asia Minor, and from Styrax Benzoin Dryand. of Malaysia. 



The generic name is that of the Greek name of Styrax officinale. 



1. Styrax grandiflora Ait. 



Leaves thin, deciduous, obovate, rounded and abruptly pointed or acute or acuminate or 

 rarely rounded at apex, cuneate or rounded at the narrow base, entire or remotely serrate 



