790 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



1. Avicennia nitida, Jacq. Black Mangrove. 



Leaves oblong or lanceolate-elliptical, rounded or acute at the apex and gradually 

 narrowed at the base, with slightly thickened revolute margins, dark green and often 

 lustrous above, hoary-tomentulose below, 2'-3' long and |'-1^' wide, with broad mid- 

 ribs thickened and grooved toward the base on the upper side, oblique primary 



veins arcuate and joined close to the margins, conspicuous on the 2 surfaces, and 

 connected by prominent reticulate veinlets, appearing irregularly and falling early 

 in their second season; their petioles broad, channeled, enlarged at the base, and 

 about \' long. Flowers produced continuously throughout the year, their bracts 

 and bractlets nearly \' long, coated with pale or slightly rufous pubescence and 

 about as long as the lobes of the calyx, in few-flowered short spikes or stout 4-angled 

 canescent peduncles \'-l\' in length, the lateral peduncles of the ternate terminal 

 clusters subtended by oblong acute bracts ^' long; corolla ^' across the expanded 

 slightly tomentose lobes, and nearly closed in the throat. Fruit I'-l^' long and '-!' 

 wide. 



A tree, occasionally 60-70 high, with a short trunk rarely 2 in diameter, spread- 

 ing branches forming a broad round-topped head, and branchlets at first slightly 

 angled, coated with fine hoary deciduous pubescence, and light orange color, becoming 

 in their second year more or less contorted, light or dark gray, conspicuously marked 

 by the interpetiolar lines and by horizontal leaf-scars displaying a central row of 

 fibro- vascular bundle-scars; usually not more than 20-30 tall, with short slender 

 stems, and toward the northern limit of its range a low shrub. Bark of the trunk 

 \'-\' thick, roughened with thin irregularly appressed dark brown scales tinged with 

 red, and in falling displaying the bright orange-red inner bark. Wood very heavy, 

 hard, rather coarse-grained, with numerous medullary rays and eccentric layers of 

 annual growth, dark brown or nearly black, with thick brown sapwood. 



Distribution. Florida, St. Augustine to the southern keys on the east coast, and 

 from Cedar Keys to Cape Sable on the west coast; also on the Bahama Islands, on 

 many of the Antilles, and southward to Brazil; in the United States of its largest 

 size just north of Cape Sable; north of Matanzas Inlet on the east coast usually with 

 stems only a few feet tall. 



