Balsamo 



847 



VI. BALSAMO 



GENUS PSYCHOTRIA LINN^US 

 Species Psychotiia undata Jacquin 



SMALL, evergreen tree or branching shrub of wooded places along the 

 coast of southern Florida and the Keys, and very common in the West 

 Indies. It attains a maximum height of about 5 meters. 



The twigs are slender, round, usually smooth and green, becoming 

 gray or brown-gray. The leaves are opposite, thin and leathery, oval, elliptic or 

 eUiptic-lanceolate, 6 to 15 cm. long, taper-pointed at each end, dark green and 

 shining with impressed venation above, pale, smooth or nearly so, and prominently 

 veined beneath, the leaf -stalk stout and about i cm. long; stipules at first con- 



FiG. 770. — Balsamo. 



spicuous, united and sheath-like, soon falling away. The flowers are usually per- 

 fect, in open cymes, the calyx-tube i mm. long, the limb s-toothed ; corolla tubu- 

 lar, 2.5 to 3 mm. long, hairy in the throat, its lobes oblong-lanceolate, shorter than 

 the tube; stamens 5, attached to the base of the corolla-tube, their filaments some- 

 what imited'; anthers introrse; ovary 2-ceUed. The fruit is a bright red fleshy 

 drupe, subglobose or ellipsoid, 4 to 4.5 mm. long, containing i or 2 prominently 

 ribbed stones. 



The genus is a large tropical American one embracing about 400 species of 

 trees or shrubs. One other species, a low branched shrub, P. tenuifolia Swartz, 

 also occurs in Florida. The generic name is Greek, meaning vivifying, in refer- 

 ence to the reputed stimulating properties of some of these plants. P. asiatica 

 Linnaeus, of Jamaica, is the type of the genus, its name misleading. 



