AQUIFOLIACK.E 



617 



A small much-branched tree, 20-25 high, with a slender often inclining trunk 

 rarely more than 0' in diameter and stout hranchlets standing at right angles with 

 the stem, slightly angled and puberulous during the first season, becoming glabrous 



or nearly glabrous, terete and pale gray in their second year; generally a tall shrub, 

 with numerous stems forming dense thickets. Winter-buds minute, obtuse, with 

 narrow dark brown or often nearly black scales. Bark of the trunk iVHj' thick, 

 the light red-brown surface broken into thin minute scales. Wood heavy, hard, 

 close-grained, nearly white, turning yellow with exposure, with thick lighter colored 

 sapwood. 



Distribution. Southern Virginia to the St. John's River and Cedar Keys, Flor- 

 ida, and westward to the shores of Matagorda Bay and the valley of the upper Rio 

 Blanco, Texas, and to southern Arkansas; in the Atlantic and east Gulf states 

 rarely far from salt water and usually not more than 10-15 high; of its largest 

 size and of tree-like habit only on the rich bottom-lands of eastern Texas. The 

 branches covered with the fruit are sold during the winter months for decorative 

 purposes. An infusion of the leaves, which are emetic and purgative, was used by 

 the Indians, who formerly visited the coast in large numbers every spring to drink it. 



4. Ilex decidua, Walt. 



Leaves deciduous, except on vigorous shoots fascicled at the ends of short spur- 

 like lateral branchlets, oblong-spatulate or spatulate-lanceolate, acuminate, obtuse, 

 or emarginate at the apex, gradually narrowed below, remotely crenulate-serrate, 

 2'-3' long, J'-l' wide, membranaceous, becoming thick and firm at maturity, light 

 green above and pale and sparingly hairy along the narrow midribs beneath; their 

 petioles slender, grooved, pubescent, about ^' long; stipules filiform, membrana- 

 ceous. Flowers on slender pedicels, those of the staminate plant often ' long and 

 longer than those of the pistillate plant, in 1 or 2-flowered glabrous cymes crowded 

 at the ends of the lateral branches of the previous season, or rarely solitary on 

 branchlets of the year; calyx-lobes triangular, with smooth or sometimes ciliate 

 margins. Fruit on short stout stems, ripening in the early autumn, often remaining 

 on the branches until the appearance of the leaves the following spring, globose 

 or depressed-globose, orange or orange-scarlet, \' in diameter; nutlets narrowed 

 and rounded at the base, acute or acuminate at the apex, many-ribbed on the back. 



