212 CHINESE ECONOMIC TREES 



BISCHOFIA 



Trees. Leaves alternate, trifoliate. Flowers small, paniculate, 

 dioecious, apetalous, inconspicuous; staminate with 5 sepals and 

 included stamens; pistillate flowers with 5 ovate, caducous sepals, 5 

 staminodes, and a 3-4 celled exserted ovary ; style linear, entire ; ovules 2 

 in each cell. Fruit globose, fleshy, 3-4 celled; seeds oblong. 



Ornamental tropical trees. 



Bischofia javanica Blume. 



Glabrous tree up to 25 m. tall with smooth or fissured gray bark, 

 and very variable trifoliate leaves; leaflets ovate to ovate-lanceolate, 

 acuminate, crenate-serrate, 8-13 cm. long. Flowers greenish in many- 

 flowered panicles. Fruit blue-black, fleshy, berry-like, on a thick 

 pedicel, about the size of a pea. Seeds dark shiny brown with papery 

 testa splitting longitudinally. 



Szechuan and Hupeh. J 



A rare tree. The wood is of no great commercial importance. The 

 foliage is bronze green, and is very ornamental. 



SAPIUM 



Glabrous trees or shrubs with milky, poisonous juice. Leaves 

 alternate, stalked, entire, seldom toothed. Petioles with 2 glands at the 

 base of the leaf; the scale-like bracts also glandular. Flowers without 

 petals, in terminal spikes; the staminate in 3's ; the pistillate flower 

 single, clustered at the base of the inflorescence. Calyx of staminate 

 flower 2-3 lobed. Ovary 1-3 celled, 1 ovule in each cell. 



Important economic plants, nearly 100 species known in the tropics 

 of both hemispheres. 



The genus is characterized by apetalous flowers on a spike, each 

 flower with 2 free stamens, and by a capsular fruit opening loculicidally 

 but retaining the seeds which are attached for a long time to the more or 

 less 3 angled central column. Propagated by seeds, layers and cuttings. 



Sapium sebiferum Roxburgh. 

 (Stillingia sebifera Michaux.) 

 Tallow tree. 



Small to medium sized tree up to 15 m. high. Leaves long stalked, 

 rhombic-ovate, often broader than long, wedge-shaped at the base, acute 



