596 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



branaceous, light green or green tinged with red and pilose, with scattered pale hairs, 

 and at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark green and lustrous, rather paler on the 

 lower than on the upper surface, 3'-5' long and l'-2' wide, with broad thick pale 

 midribs raised and rounded on the upper side and obscure primary veins arcuate and 

 united near the thick revolute cartilaginous margins and connected by conspicuous 

 coarsely reticulated veinlets; their petioles stout, yellow, grooved above, \' long; stip- 

 ules nearly triangular, rather less than J^' long, caducous. Flowers on pedicels 

 rather shorter than the petioles, opening in early spring from the axils of leaves of 

 the previous year, the staminate in many-flowered clusters, the pistillate usually 

 solitary or occasionally in 2-3-flowered clusters; calyx yellow-green, hirsute on the 

 outer surface, ^' long, and divided nearly to the base into 5 ovate acute boat-shaped 

 lobes deciduous from the fruit; stamens about 8, inserted on the borders of the slightly 

 lobed pulvinate concave disk; filaments unequal in length, rather longer than the 

 calyx-lobes and a little longer than the broadly ovate emarginate pilose extrorse an- 

 thers, with broad ovate acute connectives; ovary sessile, hirsute, l : celled, crowned 

 with a broad sessile slightly stalked oblique pulvinate stigma, wanting in the stami- 

 nate flower. Fruit ripening in the autumn, deciduous at maturity from its stout 



erect stalk much enlarged at the apex and J' long, ovoid, 1' long, ivory-white, with 

 thick dry mealy flesh closely investing the light brown stone narrowed at the base 

 into a long point, with bony walls ^' thick and penetrated longitudinally by large 

 fibro- vascular bundle-channels; seed oblong, rounded at the ends, nearly ^' long ? 

 covered with a thin inembranaceous light brown coat marked by conspicuous veins 

 radiating from the small hilum. 



A tree, occasionally 30-40 high, with a trunk sometimes a foot in diameter, stout 

 usually erect branches forming an oblong round-topped head, and stout branchlets 

 light green tinged with red and covered with pale scattered caducous hairs when they 

 first appear, becoming ashy gray and roughened by numerous elevated circular pale 

 lenticels and later by the large prominent orbicular leaf-scars displaying the ends of 

 3 conspicuous fibro-vascular bundles. Winter-buds minute, obtuse, partly immersed 

 in the bark and coated with brown resin. Bark of the trunk about ' thick, smooth, 

 milky white and often marked by large irregular gray or pale brown patches. Wood 

 heavy, hard, not strong, brittle, close-grained, and brown streaked with bright yel- 

 low, with thick yellow-brown sapwood. 



