CORNACE^ 



711 



numerous slender clustered diverging steins. Winter-buds obtuse, \' long, with 

 ovate apiculate imbricated scales rounded on the back and clothed with thick hoary 

 tomentum, those of the inner ranks becoming at maturity ovate-oblong or obovate, 

 rounded at the apex, bright red, and '-f ' long. Bark of the trunk about \' thick, 

 irregularly fissured, with a dark brown surface broken into thick appressed persist- 

 ent plate-like scales. Wood light, soft, tough, not strong, white, with thin hardly 

 distinguishable sapwood of about 10 layers of annual growth. A preserve with an 

 agreeable subacid flavor, known as Ogeechee limes, is sometimes made from the 

 fruit in Georgia and South Carolina. The flowers abound in nectar, and are much 

 visited by bees. 



Distribution. Deep often inundated river swamps or their borders; South Caro- 

 lina in the neighborhood of the coast, through the valley of the Ogeechee River, 

 Georgia, in northern and western Florida, and in the valley of the lower Appalachi- 

 oola River; rare and local. 



4. Nyssa aquatica, Marsh. Cotton Gum. Tupelo Gum. 



Leaves ovate-oblong, acute or acuminate and often long-pointed at the apex, 

 wedge-shaped, rounded, or subcordate at the base, entire or remotely and irregularly 

 angulate-toothed, the teeth often tipped with long slender mucros, when they unfold 

 light red and coated below and on the petioles with pale tomentum and pubescent 



above, especially on the midribs, and at maturity thick and firm, dark green and 

 lustrous on the upper, pale and more or less downy-pubescent on the lower surface, 

 5'-7' long and 2'-4' wide, with broad thick midribs, and 10-12 pairs of primary 

 veins forked near the margins and connected by conspicuous cross veins; their peti- 

 oles stout, grooved, hairy, enlarged at the base, 1'-21' long. Flowers appearing 

 in March and April on long slender hairy peduncles in the axils of the inner scales 

 of the terminal bud; staminate in dense capitate clusters, their peduncles furnished 

 near the middle and occasionally at the apex with long linear ciliate bractlets; 

 calyx-tube cup-shaped, obscurely 5-toothetl, one third as long as the oblong erect 

 petals rounded at the apex and much shorter than the stamens; pistillate solitary, 

 surrounded by 2-4 strap-shaped scarious ciliate bractlets often ^' long and more or 

 less united below into an involucral cup; calyx-tube oblong and much longer than the 

 ovate minute spreading petals; stamens included, with small mostly fertile anthers; 



