680 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



Often cultivated in the eastern states and hardy as far north as Philadelphia, and 

 occasionally in western and central Europe. 



XL. CANELLACE.S3. 



Trees, with pungent aromatic bark, alternate pellucid-punctate entire penni- 

 veined persistent leaves without stipules. Flowers perfect, regular, cymose ; 

 sepals and petals imbricated in the bud ; stamens numerous, hypogynous, with 

 filaments united into a tube inclosing the pistil, and narrow extrorse anthers 

 adnate to the tube and longitudinally 2-celled; pistil of 2-3 united carpels; 

 ovary free, 1-celled, with 25 parietal placentas ; styles thick ; stigmas 2-5- 

 lobed ; ovules 2 or many. Fruit a berry ; seeds 2 or several ; seed-coat thick, 

 crustaceous ; embryo small in fleshy oily albumen. 



The Wild Cinnamon family with four genera and few species is confined to 

 tropical America, south Africa, and Madagascar, a single species reaching the 

 shores of southern Florida. 



1. CANELLA, P. Br. 



A tree, with scaly bark, stout ashy gray branchlets conspicuously marked by large 

 orbicular leaf-scars, and minute buds. Leaves obovate, rounded or slightly eniargi- 

 nate at the apex, gradually narrowed to the cuneate base, petiolate, coriaceous. Flow- 

 ers small, in many-flowered subcorymbose terminal or subterminal panicles of sev- 

 eral dichotomously branched cymes from the axils of upper leaves or from minute 

 caducous bracts; sepals 3, suborbicular, concave, coriaceous, erect, their margins 

 ciliate, persistent; petals 5, hypogynous, in a single row on the slightly convex 

 receptacle, oblong, concave, rounded at the apex, fleshy, twice as long as the sepals, 

 white or rose color; stamens about 20, staminal tube crenulate at the summit and 

 slightly extended above the anthers; ovary cylindrical or oblong-conical, 1-celled, 

 with 2 parietal placentas; style short, fleshy, terminating in a 2 or 3-lobed 

 stigma; ovules numerous, arcuate, horizontal or descending, attached by short funi- 

 cles, imperfectly anatropous; micropyle superior. Fruit globose or slightly ovate, 

 fleshy, minutely pointed with the base of the persistent style, 2-4-seeded. Seeds 

 reniform, suspended; seed-coat black and shining; embryo curved in the copious 

 albumen; cotyledons oblong; radicle next the hilum. 



The genus consists of a single West Indian tree, extending into southern Florida 

 and to Venezuela. 



The generic name is from canella, the diminutive of the Latin cana or canna, a 

 cane or reed, first applied to the bark of some Old World tree from the form of a 

 roll or quill which it assumed in drying. 



1. Canella Winterana, Gaertn. Cinnamon Bark. White Wood. Wild 



Cinnamon. 



Leaves contracted into short stout grooved petioles, 3|'-5' long, l'-2' wide, 

 bright green and lustrous. Flowers about \' in diameter, opening in the autumn. 

 Fruit ripening in March and April, bright crimson, soft and fleshy, ' in diameter; 

 seeds about fo' long. 



A tree, in Florida 25-30 high, with a straight trunk 8'-10' in diameter, and 

 slender horizontal spreading branches forming a compact round-headed top. Bark 

 of the trunk ty thick, light gray, broken on the surface into numerous short thick 

 scales rarely more than 2'-3' long and about twice as thick as the pale yellow aro- 



