S78 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



A glabrous tree, in Florida sometimes 20-25 high, with a trunk 10'-12' in diameter, 

 slender erect branches forming a narrow head, and terete branchlets dark green at first, soon 

 becoming dark red-brown and covered with pale lenticels, and in their second year ashy 

 gray and conspicuously marked by the elevated leaf-scars. Bark of the trunk about f ' 

 thick, and divided by deep fissures into square smooth pale or nearly white plates. Wood 

 very heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, light brown handsomely streaked with 

 different shades of yellow and brown, with bright yehW sap wood of 12-20 layers of annual 

 growth. 



Distribution. Florida, shores of Bay Biscayne and on the Everglade Keys, Dade 

 County, and on the southern keys; abundant on Key West and Upper Metacombe Key: 

 on many of the Antilles, in southern Mexico, and on the west coast of Nicaragua. 



3. CEPHALANTHUS L. 



Small trees or shrubs, with opposite or verticillate petiolate leaves, interpetiolar stipules, 

 and scaly buds. Flowers nectariferous, yellow or creamy white, sessile in the axils of 

 glandular bracts, in dense globose pedunculate terminal or axillary solitary or panicled 

 heads; receptacle globose, setose; calyx- tube obpyramidal, with a short limb unequally 4 or 

 5-toothed or lobed; corolla tubular salver-form, divided into 4 or 5 short spreading or re- 

 flexed lobes usually furnished with a minute dark gland at the base or on the side of each 

 sinus, puberulous on the inner surface of the tube, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens 

 inserted on the throat of the corolla; filaments short; anthers linear-oblong, sagittate, apicu- 

 late at base; pistil of 2 carpels; ovary 2-celled; style filiform, elongated; stigma clavate, en- 

 tire; ovule solitary in each cell, suspended from the apex of the cell on a short papillose 

 f unicle, anatropous. Fruit obpyramida!, coriaceous, 2-coccous. Seeds oblong, pendulous, 

 covered at apex by a white spongy aril; embryo straight in cartilaginous albumen; cotyle- 

 dons oblong, obtuse; radicle elongated, superior. 



Cephalanthus with seven species is widely distributed in North and South America, and 

 in southern and eastern Asia, and the Malay Archipelago. 



The generic name, from Ke^aXiy and &v6os, relates to the capitate inflorescence. 



1. Cephalanthus occidentalis L. Button Bush. 



Leaves ovate, lanceolate or elliptic, acute, acuminate or short-pointed at apex, rounded 

 or cuneate at base, thin, dark green on the upper surface, paler and glabrous or puberulous 

 on the lower surface, 2'-7' long and ^'-3f ' wide, with a stout light yellow midrib often cov- 

 ered below 7 with long white hairs and 5 or t> pairs of slender primary veins nearly parallel 

 with the sides of the leaf; deciduous, or persistent during the winter; petioles stout, grooved, 

 glabrous, 5' |' in length; stipules minute, nearly triangular. Flowers: flower-heads l'-l|' 

 in diameter on slender peduncles l'-2' long, usually in panicles 4'-5' in length, their lower 

 peduncles from the axil of upper leaves; flo\vers creamy white, very fragrant, opening from 

 the middle of May in Florida and Texas to the middle of August in Canada and on the 

 mountains of California; calyx usually 4 or occasionally 5-lobed, with short rounded lobes, 

 and slightly villose toward the base; corolla glandular or eglandular; anthers nearly sessile, 

 included, discharging their pollen before the flowers open; disk thin and obscure. Fruit 

 ripening late in the autumn in heads f '-' in diameter, green tinged with red and ultimately 

 dark red-brow r n. 



A tree, occasionally 40-50 high, with a straight tapering trunk a foot in diameter, and 

 frequently free of limbs for 15-20, ascending and spreading branches, and stout branch- 

 lets with a thick pith, glabrous and marked by large oblong pale lenticels, and developed 

 mostly in verticels of 3's from the axillary buds of one of the upper nodes, without a termi- 

 nal bud, light green when they first appear, pale reddish brown, covered with a glaucous 

 bloom during their first winter and then marked by small semicircular leaf-scars displaying 

 semilunate fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and connected by the persistent black stipules or by 

 their subulate scars, darker the following season, and dark brown in their third year, the 

 bark then beginning to separate into the large loose scales found on the large branches and 



