Crabwood 



599 



gin, dark green and shining, with the midrib prominent above, pale, glaucous 

 and reticulated beneath; leaf-stalk short, grooved above, yellowish. The flowers 

 appear in early spring in the axils of the leaves of the previous season. The 

 staminate are in many-flowered clusters, on pedicels shorter than the leaf-stalk: 

 calyx yellowish, lobed, oblong or oval, blunt and smooth; stamens 8, filaments 

 unequal; anthers nearly as broad as long, hairy. The pistillate flowers are usually 

 solitary, the ovary hairy, i-celled; stigma broad, almost sessile. The fruit is an 

 oblong or ovoid drupe 2 to 2.5 cm. long, bright white, very conspicuous among 

 the dark green leaves; flesh thick and pulpy, stone obovoid, much narrowed at the 

 base; the seed is oblong, rounded at each end, 10 mm. 'long, light brown and 

 marked by conspicuous radiating veins. 



The wood is hard, weak, brittle, dense, and brown; its specific gravity is about 

 0.93. Leaves of seedlings and of shoots from cut stumps are coarsely toothed 

 with bristle-tipped teeth. It is called Whitewood in the Bahamas. 



II. CRABWOOD 



GENUS GYBflNANTHES SWARTZ 

 Species Gymnanthes lucida Swartz 



JLSO called Poison wood, this is a small milky-sapped evergreen tree or 

 shrub of peninsular Florida and the Keys, also in the Bahamas and 

 other West Indies generally; its maximum height is 10 meters, with 

 a trunk diameter of 2 dm. 

 The ridged trunk is slender, sometimes much enlarged at the base. The 



branches are slender, erect 



or ascending. The bark is 



about 1.5 mm. thick, 



smooth or somewhat scaly 



and dark brown. The 



twigs are slender, round, 



light green, Jjecoming gray. 



The leaves are alternate, 



thick, obovate to oblong- 



spatulate or nearly oblong, 



5 to 10 cm. long, blunt- 

 pointed, tapering at the 



base, entire or wavy on the 



margin, becoming dark 



green, smooth and shining 



above, pale, dull and 



prominently veined be- 

 neath; the petiole is slightly grooved, 5 to 20 mm. long, the stipules small, falUng 



early. The small green flowers are monoecious, the staminate in slender axillary 



Fig. 551. — Crabwood. 



