588 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



and staminate produced together, the staminate usually less numerous and fall- 

 ing soon after the opening of the anther-cells; calyx and petals pubescent; ovary 

 puberulous. Fruits with thin almost orbicular sometimes slightly obovate wings, 

 nearly 1' across, on long slender reflexed pedicels, in dense drooping clusters re- 

 maining on the branches through the winter; seeds ^' long, dark red-brown. 



A round-headed tree, rarely 20-25 high, with a straight slender trunk 6'-8' in 

 diameter, small spreading or erect branches, and slender branchlets covered at first 

 with short fine pubescence, becoming glabrous, dark brown, and lustrous, and marked 

 by wart-like excrescences and by the conspicuous leaf-scars; more often a low 

 spreading shrub. Winter-buds depressed, nearly round, pale or almost white. 

 "Wood heavy, 4 hard, close-grained, yellow-brown, with thin hardly distinguishable 

 sapwood of 6-8 layers of annual growth. The bitter bark of the roots is sometimes 

 used in the form of tinctures and fluid extracts as a tonic, and the fruit is occasionally 

 employed domestically as a substitute for hops in brewing beer. 



Distribution. Generally on rocky slopes near the borders of the forest, often in 

 the shade of other trees; Point Pelee on the northern shore of Lake Ontario, Long 

 Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and westward to Minnesota and southward to 

 Florida, and through Texas and New Mexico to the valley of the Mimbres River, 

 the mountains of Colorado, and northern Mexico. 



Often planted as an ornament of parks and gardens. 



4. AMYRIS, L. 



Glabrous glandular-punctate trees or shrubs, with balsamic resinous juices. Leaves 

 opposite or rarely opposite and alternate, 3-foliolate, without stipules, persistent ; 

 leaflets opposite, petiolulate, entire or creuate. Flowers white, minute, on slender 

 bibracteolate pedicels, usually in 3-flowered corymbs in terminal or axillary branched 

 panicles; calyx 4-toothed, persistent; petals 4, hypogynous, much larger than the 

 calyx-lobes, spreading at maturity; disk of the staminate flower inconspicuous, that 

 of the pistillate and perfect flowers thickened and pulviuate; stamens 8, hypogynous, 

 opposite and alternate with the petals; filaments filiform, exserted; anthers ovate, 

 attached on the back below the middle; ovary ellipsoidal or ovoid, 1-celled, rudi- 

 mentary in the staminate flower; style short, terminal, or wanting; stigma capitate; 

 ovules collateral, suspended near the apex of the ovary, anatropous. Fruit a globose 

 or ovoid aromatic drupe; stone 1-seeded by abortion, chartaceous. Seed pendulous, 

 without albumen; seed-coat membranaceous ; cotyledons plano-convex, fleshy, gland- 

 ular-punctate. 



Amyris is confined to tropical America and northern Mexico. Of the twelve or 

 fourteen species which have been distinguished two extend into the territory of the 

 United States; one of these is a small West Indian tree common on the shores of 

 southern Florida, and the other a Mexican shrub found growing in Texas near the 

 month of the Rio Grande. Amyris is fragrant and yields a balsamic aromatic and 

 stimulant resin, and heavy hard close-grained wood valuable as fuel and some- 

 times used in cabinet-making. 



The generic name, from /xi'^a, relates to the balsamic properties of the plants of 

 this genus. 



1. Amyris Elemifera, L. Torch Wood. 



Leaves 3-foliolate, with slender petioles l'-l^' long, and broadly ovate or rounded 

 obtuse acute or acuminate leaflets wedge-shaped at the base or sometimes ovate- 



