746 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



arcuate near the margins; their petioles stout, '- f' long. Flowers appearing in 

 Florida irregularly throughout the year and often found on the same branch with ripe 

 or half-grown fruits, on stout pedicels shorter than the petioles, covered like the calyx 

 with rufous tomentum, in few or many-flowered fascicles in the axils of leaves or at 

 the base of lateral branchlets in those of earlier years; calyx divided nearly to the 

 base into broad rounded lobes rather shorter than the tube of the subrotate white 

 corolla, with short spreading rounded lobes without staminodia or appendages; ovary 

 5-celled, pubescent, gradually contracted into a short style crowned by a broad 

 5-lobed stigma. Fruit usually 1-seeded by abortion, on stems 1' long, usually only 

 a single fruit being produced from a flower-cluster, ovoid or sometimes nearly 

 globose, dark purple, roughened by occasional excrescences, with a thick tough 

 skin inclosing the juicy sweet mawkishly flavored flesh light purple on the exterior, 

 lighter toward the interior, and quite white in the centre; seed narrowed at the 

 ends, \' long, covered with a thin light brown coat closely invested with a white 

 glutinous aril-like pulpy mass. 



A tree, 25-30 high, with a tall straight trunk sometimes a foot in diameter, up- 

 right branches forming a compact oblong head, and slender slightly zigzag branchlets 

 coated at first with ferrugineous tomentum, becoming in their second year light red- 

 brown or ashy gray and covered with small pale elevated circular lenticels. Bark 

 of the trunk \' thick, light brown slightly tinged with red, and broken by shallow 

 fissures into large irregularly shaped plates separating on the surface into small thin 

 scales. Wood very heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, light brown shaded with red, 

 with thin lighter colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Southern Florida from Mosquito Inlet to the southern keys, and 

 from the shores of Caloosa River to Cape Sable; local and nowhere common; also 

 on the Bahamas and on many of the Antilles. 



5. MIMTTSOFS, L. 



Trees or rarely shrubs, with stout terete branchlets, small naked buds, and sweet 

 juice. Leaves usually clustered at the ends of the branches, with slender inconspicu- 

 ous transverse veins and minute reticulate veinlets, persistent. Flowers on clavate 

 ebracteolate pedicels from the axils of minute deciduous bracts; calyx 6-8-parted, the 

 divisions in 2 series, those of the exterior series almost valvate in the bud; corolla 

 white, barely longer than the calyx, subrotate, usually dilated at the throat, 6-8-lobed, 

 the lobes furnished at the base with a pair of petal-like appendages; stamens as 

 many as the lobes of the corolla; filaments short, dilated; anthers lanceolate, their 

 connectives excurrent, acute, or sometimes aristate at the apex; staminodia as many 

 as the lobes of the corolla, scale-like or petaloid, entire, 2-lobed or laciniate; ovary 

 ovate, hirsute or puberulous, gradually narrowed into a slender style stigmatic at the 

 apex. Fruit globose, 1 or 2-seeded, tipped with the much thickened elongated style; 

 skin crustaceous, indurate; flesh, thick and dry. Seed oblong-ovate, slightly com- 

 pressed; seed-coat crustaceous, chestnut-brown and lustrous; hilum elongated, lateral 

 or minute, basilar; embryo surrounded by thick fleshy albumen; cotyledons flat, thick 

 and fleshy, much longer than the short erect radicle. 



Mimusops with thirty or forty species is widely distributed through the tropics of 

 the two hemispheres, a single species reaching the shores of southern Florida. Sev- 

 eral species produce hard heavy timber, edible fruits, or valuable milky juices. 



The significance of the generic name, from mpta and Jfyis in allusion to the shape of 

 the corolla, is not apparent. 



