RUBIACE.E 803 



the bark. Bark of large trunks dark gray-brown or often nearly black, divided by 

 deep fissures into broad flat ridges broken on the surface into elongated narrow 

 scales. The bark contains tannin, and has been used in the treatment of fevers and 

 in homoeopathic practice. 



Distribution. Swamps and the low wet borders of ponds and streams; New 

 Brunswick to Ontario and eastern Nebraska and Kansas, southward to Florida, 

 Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, and widely distributed in California; also in 

 Mexico and Cuba; very rarely arborescent at the north and of its largest size on 

 the margins of river-bottoms and swamps, and in pond holes in southern Arkansas 

 and eastern Texas. 



Occasionally cultivated in the northeastern states as an ornamental plant, 



4. GUETTARDA, Endl. 



Small trees or shrubs, with bitter bark, opposite or rarely verticellate leaves, inter- 

 petiolar deciduous stipules, and scaly buds. Flowers sessile, with or without bracts, 

 in axillary forked pedunculate cymes, their bracts and bractlets lanceolate, acute, mi- 

 nute, deciduous; calyx globose, the limb produced above the ovary into an elongated 

 4-lobed tube; corolla salver-shaped, with an elongated cylindrical tube naked in the 

 throat, and a 4-lobed limb, the oblong lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens included; 

 filaments free, short; anthers oblong-linear; ovary 4-celled, the cells elongated, tubu- 

 lar; style stout; stigma capitate; ovule solitary, suspended on the thickened funicle 

 from the inner angle of the cell. Fruit a fleshy 1 -stoned 4-9-seeded subglobose 

 drupe, with thin flesh, and a bony or ligneous globose stone obtusely angled or sul- 

 cate, 4-9-celled, the cells narrow and often curved upward. Seeds compressed, sus- 

 pended on the thick funicles closing the orifice of the wall of the stone, straight or 

 excurved; albumen thin and fleshy; embryo elongated, cylindrical or compressed; 

 cotyledons flat, minute, not longer than the elongated terete radicle turned toward 

 the hilum. 



Guettarda with about fifty species is chiefly tropical American, with one species 

 widely distributed on maritime shores from eastern tropical Africa to Australia and 

 the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Of the two species found within the territory of 

 the United States one is arborescent. The bark of some of the species is occasion- 

 ally employed as a tonic and febrifuge, and a few species are cultivated in tropical 

 gardens for the delightful fragrance of their white flowers. 



The generic name is in honor of Jean Etienne Guettard (1715-1786), the distin- 

 guished French botanist and mineralogist. 



1. Guettarda elliptica, Sw. 



Leaves broadly oval to elliptical-oblong, acute or obtuse and apiculate at the 

 apex, and wedge-shaped and rounded at the base, when they unfold covered with 

 pale silky hairs, and at maturity membranaceous, dark green, pilose or glabrate 

 above, lighter colored and pubescent below, especially along the stout midribs and in 

 the axils of the 4-6 pairs of primary veins, f '-2' long and '-!' wide, unfolding in 

 Florida in May and June and persistent on the branches until the trees begin their 

 growth the following year; their petioles stout, hairy, \'-^ f in length. Flowers 

 appearing in Florida in June, yellowish white, $' long, in slender hairy-stemmed 

 cymes from the axils of leaves of the year near the ends of the branches, or from 

 bud-scales at the base of young shoots, their peduncles shorter than the leaves, 



