SAPOTACEJE 745 



4. CHRYSOPHYLLUM. 



Trees, with terete branchlets usually coated while young with dense tomentum, and 

 naked buds. Leaves short-petiolate, bright greeu and glabrous on the upper sur- 

 face and coated on the lower with brilliant silky pubescence or tomentum, persistent. 

 Flowers on ebracteolate pedicels from the axils of minute acute deciduous bracts, 

 minute, in dense many-flowered fascicles axillary or from leafless thickened nodes 

 of previous years; calyx usually 5-parted, the divisions nearly equal, obtuse; corolla 

 5 or rarely 6 or 7-lobed, tubular, campanulate or subrotate, white or greenish 

 white; filaments short, subulate or filiform, enlarged into broad connectives; an- 

 thers ovate or triangular, attached on the back, extrorse or rarely partly introrse, 

 the cells spreading below; ovary usually 5-celled, villose, contracted into a glabrous 

 short or elongated style crowned by a 5-lobed stigma. Fruit oblong or globose. Seed 

 ovoid; seed-coat coriaceous, dull or lustrous; hilum subbasilar, elongated, conspicu- 

 ous; embryo erect, surrounded by more or less pungent fleshy albumen; cotyledons 

 oblong, foliaceous. 



Chrysophyllum is tropical, with fifty or sixty species most abundant in the New 

 World, with a small number of species in^ western and southern tropical Africa, 

 southern Asia, Australia, and the Hawaiian Islands. The most valuable species, Chry- 

 sophyllum Cainito, L., a native of the West Indies and now cultivated in all tropical 

 countries and naturalized in many parts of Central and South America, produces the 

 so-called star-apple, a succulent edible blue or purple and green fruit the size and 

 shape of a small apple. 



The generic name, from %pvff6s and <pv\\ov, is in allusion to the golden covering of 

 the under surface of the leaves. 



1. Chrysophyllum oliviforme, Lam. 



Leaves revolute in the bud, oval, acute or contracted into short broad points or 

 sometimes rounded at the apex, abruptly wedge-shaped at the base, thick and cori- 

 aceous, 2'-3' long, 1^-2' wide, bright blue-green on the upper and covered on the 



lower surface and on the petioles with brilliant copper-colored pubescence, with broad 

 prominent midribs deeply impressed on the upper side and numerous straight veins 



