610 TKEES OF NORTH AMERICA 



pale pubescence disappearing in their second and third years, and bright reddish 

 brown and marked by numerous small elevated lenticels; or usually a small often 

 almost prostrate shrub. Winter-buds small, obtuse, covered with a thick coat of 



pale tomentum. Bark of the trunk \'-% thick, bright reddish brown, exfoliating in 

 large plate-like scales. Wood hard, heavy, bright clear red, with thin pale sap- 

 wood of 8-10 layers of annual growth; valued and largely used as fuel. The fruit 

 is occasionally employed in the preparation of a cooling beverage. 



Distribution. Sandy sterile soil along sea beaches and bluffs in the immediate 

 neighborhood of the ocean; Santa Barbara, California, to the shores of Magdalena 

 Bay, Lower California, and on the Santa Barbara and Cedros islands; on the main- 

 land usually shrubby, forming close impenetrable thickets; in more sheltered situa- 

 tions and on the islands becoming arborescent; probably of its largest size on the 

 shores of Todos Santos Bay, Lower California. 



XXX. CYRILLACE-ffJ. 



Trees or shrubs, with small scaly buds and watery juice. Leaves alternate, 

 entire, subcoriaceous, without stipules, persistent or tardily deciduous. Flowers 

 small, regular, perfect, on slender bibracteolate pedicels, in terminal or axil- 

 lary racemes; calyx 5-8-lobed, persistent, the lobes imbricated in the bud; 

 petals 5-8, hypogynous ; stamens 5-10, hypogynous, those opposite the petals 

 shorter than the others ; anthers oblong, introrse, 2-celled, the cells laterally 

 dehiscent, opening longitudinally ; ovary 2-4-celled ; ovules suspended, ana- 

 tropous ; raphe dorsal ; micropyle superior. Fruit an indehiscent capsule. 

 Seed suspended ; seed-coat membranaceous ; albumen fleshy, radicle superior. 



A family confined to the warmer parts of America, with three genera, of 

 which two are represented by small trees in the southern states. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Flowers in axillary racemes; calyx 5-lobed ; petals 5, contorted in the bud; fruit without 

 \\iug-s, 2-celled, with 2 seeds in each cell. 1. Cyrilla. 



Flowers in terminal racemes ; calyx 5-8-lobed ; petals 5-8, imbricated in the bud ; fruit 

 with 2-4 wings, 3 or rarely 4-celled, with 1 seed in each cell. 2. Clif tonia. 



