Rough-Leaved Strongback 



821 



11. THE STRONGBACKS 



GENUS BOURRERJA PATRICK BROWNE 



OURRERIA is composed of about 18 species of trees or shrubs, abun- 

 dant in the West Indies, and peculiar to tropical America, 2 of which 

 enter our area on the Florida Keys. 



They have alternate evergreen leaves. The white flowers are in 

 terminal corymbose cymes ; the calyx is bell-shaped, persistent, sometimes accres- 

 cent, 2- to 5-lobed; the corolla is bell-shaped or funnelform, the tube variable in 

 length, often enlarged at the throat, the 5 lobes broadly ovate and spreading; the 

 stamens are joined to the corolla-tube, the filaments thread-like, the anthers ovate 

 or oblong; the ovary is sessile, incompletely 4-celled, narrowed into a terminal style, 

 which is 2-lobed at the apex; ovules solitary in each cavity. The fruit is a sub- 

 globular drupe, tipped by the base of the style, with a fleshy exocarp enclosing 4 

 long nutlets, each with a spongy appendage on the back, and flattened on their 

 inner surfaces; the seeds are round and curved, brown, the endosperm fleshy. 



The name is in commemoration of J. A. Bourrer, a pharmacist of Nuremberg, 

 Germany, the type species being B. succulenta Jacquin, of the West Indies. 

 Our species are : 



Leaves rough above; petioles less than 5 mm. long. 

 Leaves smooth above; petioles over 10 mm. long. 



1. B. virgata. 



2. B. havanensis. 



I. ROUGH-LEAVED STRONGBACK — Bourreria virgata (Swartz) D. Don 



Ehretia virgata Swartz. Bourreria radula Chapman, not D. Don 

 Ehretia radula Chapman, not Poiret 



A small tree, but usually a shrub, of the 

 Florida Keys and the West Indies, reaching a 

 maximum height of 13 meters, with a trunk di- 

 ameter of 2.5^ dm. 



The bark is about 2 mm. thick, divided into 

 thin scales of a light reddish brown color. The 

 twigs are slender, upright, round and smooth or 

 very nearly so, becoming more or less scaly and 

 dark grayish. The leaves are firm, obovate or 

 oblong-obovate, 2 to 6 cm. long, rounded, blunt 

 pointed, or notched at the apex, wedge-shaped 

 or tapering at the base to a short leaf-stalk, 

 revolute on the margin, dark green and very 

 rough above, pale, smooth and prominently 

 veined beneath. The flowers are in few -flowered 

 cymes 2 to 6 cm. across, on smooth pedicels; 



Fig. 750. — Rough-leaved Strongback. 



