'622 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



dark brown or nearly black, with thick light brown sapwood of 75-80 layers of 

 annual growth. 



Distribution. Common and generally distributed over the keys of southern 



Florida from the Marquesas toMetacombe Key; also in Cuba, Porto Rico, Trinidad, 

 and southern Mexico. A form (var. glaucescens, Sarg.) with smaller less coriaceous 

 very glaucous leaves occurs in Cuba. 



3. SCH-SJFFERIA, Jacq. 



Glabrous trees or shrubs, with slender rigid terete branches and small obtuse 

 buds. Leaves alternate, or fascicled on short spur-like branchlets, entire, obovate or 

 spatulate, acute and minutely apiculate or gradually narrowed to the rounded or emar- 

 ginate apex, cuneate below, persistent, without stipules. Flowers dioecious, pedi- 

 cellate in axillary clusters from buds covered by scale-like persistent bracts; calyx 

 4-lobed, the lobes orbicular, persistent, much shorter than the 4 hypogynous, oblong- 

 obtuse, white or greenish white petals; stamens 4, hypogynous, inserted under the 

 margin of the small inconspicuous disk opposite the lobes of the calyx, wanting 

 in the pistillate flower; filaments subulate, incurved; anthers oblong-ovate; ovary 

 2-celled, ovoid, sessile, free, rudimentary in the staminate flower; style very short, 

 gradually enlarged into the large 2-lobed stigma, with spreading lobes; ovule soli- 

 tary, ascending; raphe thin, ventral; the micro pyle inferior. Fruit a small 2-seeded 

 fleshy drupe, ovate or obovate, crowned with the remnants of the persistent style, 

 indistinctly 2-lobed by longitudinal grooves, slightly flattened; flesh thin and tuber- 

 culate; nutlets 2, obovate, rounded at the ends, with a thick bony shell. Seed 

 solitary, ascending; seed-coat membranaceous; albumen fleshy; cotyledons broad, 

 foliaceous; the radicle very short, inferior, next the hilum. 



Two species of Schsefferia are recognized, one a small tree widely distributed 

 through the Antilles and reaching the islands of southern Florida and central 

 America, the second a little-known shrub of the arid region of western Texas and 

 northern Mexico. 



The generic name is in honor of Jakob Christian Schaeffer (1718-1790), the dis- 

 tinguished German naturalist. 



