KGEBERLINIACE^; 681 



matic inner bark. Wood very heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, dark 

 red-brown, with thick light brown or yellow sapwood of 25-30 layers of annual 



growth. The bitter acrid inner bark is the wild cinnamon bark of commerce. It 

 has a pleasant cinnamon-like odor and is an aromatic stimulant and tonic. 



Distribution. In Florida common and widely distributed on the southern keys, 

 usually growing in the shade of other trees. 



XLI. KCBBERLINIACE-S1. 



An intricately branched almost leafless tree or shrub, with thin red-brown 

 scaly bark, stout alternate glabrous branchlets covered with pale green bark 

 and terminating in sharp rigid straight or slightly curved spines. Leaves mi- 

 nute, early deciduous, alternate, narrowly obovate, rounded at the apex. 

 Flowers perfect, on slender club-shaped puberulous pedicels from the axils of 

 minute scarious deciduous bracts, in short umbel-like racemes below the ends 

 of the branches ; calyx of 3 or 4 minute sepals imbricated in the bud, decidu- 

 ous ; petals 4, convolute in the bud, hypogynous, obovate or oblong, subunguic- 

 ulate, white, much longer than the sepals ; disk ; stamens 8, free, hypogy- 

 nous, as long as the petals ; filaments thickened in the middle, subulate at the 

 ends ; anthers oval, attached on the back near the base, 2-celled, the cells 

 opening longitudinally; ovary ovoid, 2-celled, contracted at the base into a 

 short stalk and above into a simple subulate style ; stigma terminal, obtuse, 

 slightly emarginate ; ovules numerous, adnate in several series to the fleshy- 

 placenta, horizontal or dependent, anatropous. Fruit a 2-celled berry, black at 

 maturity, subglobose, tipped witli the remnants of the pointed style ; flesh thin 

 and succulent, the cells 1 or 2-seeded by abortion. Seed vertical, circinate- 

 cochleate ; seed-coat crustaceous, slightly rugose, striate ; albumen thin ; 

 embryo annular ; cotyledons semiterete ; the radicle ascending. 



The family is represented by a single genus. 



1. KCEBERLINIA, Zucc. 



Characters of the family. 



Kceberlinia with one species is North American. 



The generic name is in honor of L. Koeberlin, a German botanist. 



