618 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



A tree, 20-30 high, with a slender trunk 6'-10' in diameter, stout spreading 

 branches, and slender glabrous pale silver gray branchlets; more often a tall strag- 

 gling shrub. Winter-buds minute, obtuse, with ovate light gray scales. Bark of 

 the trunk rarely more than ^' thick, light brown, and roughened by wart-like excres- 

 cences. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, creamy white, with rather lighter colored 

 sapwood. 



Distribution. Borders of streams and swamps in low moist soil; southern Vir- 

 ginia to western Florida in the region between the eastern base of the Appalachian 



Mountains and the neighborhood of the coast, and through the Gulf states to the 

 valley of the Colorado River, Texas, and through Arkansas and Missouri to southern 

 Illinois; usually shrubby east of the Mississippi River and only arborescent in 

 Missouri, southern Arkansas, and eastern Texas. In Florida a form (var. Curtissii, 

 Fern.) occurs with leaves only '-' long and fruit about \' in diameter. 



5. Ilex monticola, Gray. 



Leaves deciduous, ovate to lanceolate-oblong, acute at the apex, cuneate or 

 rounded at the base, sharply and rather remotely serrate, with minute glandular 

 teeth, membranaceous, glabrous, or sparingly hairy along the prominent midribs 

 and veins, 4'-5' long, ^'-2' wide, light green above and pale below; their petioles 

 slender, \' |' long. Flowers appearing in June when the leaves are more than 

 half grown, on slender pedicels ^' long on the staminate plant and much longer on 

 the pistillate plant, in 1-2-flowered cymes crowded at the ends of lateral spur-like 

 branchlets of the previous year, or solitary on branchlets of the year; calyx-lobes 

 acute, ciliate; ovary contracted below the broad flat stigma. Fruit globose, bright 

 scarlet, nearly ^' in diameter; nutlets narrowed at the ends, prominently ribbed 

 on the back and sides. 



A tree, 30-40 high, with a short trunk sometimes 10'-12' in diameter, slender 

 branches forming a narrow pyramidal head, and more or less zigzag glabrous branch- 

 lets pale red-brown at first, becoming dark gray at the end of their first season; more 

 often a low shrub, with spreading stems. Winter-buds broadly ovate to subglobose, 

 about \' long, with ovate keeled apiculate light brown scales. Bark of the trunk 

 usually less than ^' thick, with a light brown surface roughened by numerous lenti- 

 cels. Wood hard, heavy, close-grained, and creamy white. 



