CAPBIFOLIACE^E 891 



low, usually about 3' long and f'-l|' wide, with a stout yellow midrib, numerous slender 

 primary veins, and reticulate veinlets more or less covered below throughout the season 

 with rufous tomentum also occasionally found on the upper side of the midrib; petioles 

 stout, grooved, ^'-f long, and margined with broad or narrow wings. Flowers ' in di- 

 ameter, in sessile 3-5 but usually 4-rayed thick-stemmed ferrugineo-pubescent flat 

 corymbs often 5 '-6' in diameter, with minute subulate bracts and bractlets; corolla creamy 

 white, with orbicular or oblong rounded lobes. Fruit ripening in October, in few-fruited 

 drooping red-stemmed clusters, short-oblong or slightly obovoid, bright blue covered with 

 a glaucous bloom, and \'-\' long; stone \' long and about -3-' wide. 



A tree, often 40 high, with a trunk 12'-18' in diameter, short thick branches forming an 

 open irregular head, and stout branchlets marked by numerous small red-brown or orange 

 lenticels, when they first appear more or less coated with ferrugineous tomentum, ashy gray 

 during their first winter, and dark dull red-brown in their second season. Winter-buds 

 ferrugineo-tomentose, those containing flower-bearing branchlets broad-ovoid, full and 

 rounded at base, short-pointed and obtuse at apex, compressed, often \' long and \' wide, 

 and rather larger than those containing sterile branchlets. Bark of the trunk |'-|' thick, 

 separating into narrow rounded ridges divided by numerous cross fissures, and roughened 

 by small plate-like dark brown scales tinged with red. Wood bad-smelling. 



Distribution. Dry upland woods and the margins of river-bottom lands; southwestern 

 Virginia and southern Indiana and Illinois to Hernando County, Florida, and through the 

 Gulf States to the valleys of the upper Guadalupe River and of Clear Creek, Brown 

 County, Texas, and to eastern and southwestern Oklahoma (on the Wichita Mountains, 

 Comanche County), eastern Kansas and Central Missouri; most abundant and of its largest 

 size in southern Arkansas, western Louisiana, and eastern Texas. 



Occasionally cultivated in the eastern states, and hardy as far north as eastern Massa- 

 chusetts. 



