TREES AND SHRUBS. 



TEEMA MOLLIS (Willd.), Bl. 



Teema mollis (Willdenow), Blume, Mus. Lugd. Bat. ii. 58 (1852). — Coombs, Trans. St. Louis 



Acad. Sci. vii. 464. 

 Celtis mollis, Willdenow, Spec. iv. 996 (1805). — Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth, Nov. Gen. 



& Spec. ii. 24. 

 Sponia mollis (Willdenow), Decaisue, Nouv. Ann. Mus. iii. 499 (Herb. Timor. Descript.) 



(1835). — Plancbon, Ann. Sci. Nat. set. 3, x. 331.— Grisebacb, Fl. Brit. W. Ind. 150; 



Gat. PI Cub. 57. — Sauvalle, Fl. Cub. 149. 

 Sponia micbantha D, Planchon, De Gandolle Prodr. xvii. 203 (in part) (1873). 

 Trema micbantha, Chapman, Fl. ed. 2, Suppl. 649 (not Blume) (1883). 

 Tkema florid ana, Britton, Small Fl. Southeastern U. S. 366 (1903). — Britton & Shafer, 



N. Am. Trees, 360, f . 320. 



Leaves two-ranked, ovate, abruptly acuminate, rounded, cordate, and more or less or not at all 

 oblique at the base, finely serrate, with incurved or rounded apiculate teeth, dark green and 

 scabrate on the upper surface, covered with pale tomentum on the lower surface, from 6 to 10 

 centimetres long, and from 3 to 6 centimetres wide, with prominent midribs and primary veins, 

 and conspicuous reticulate veinlets ; petioles stout, tomentose, about 1 centimetre in length ; 

 stipules narrow, acuminate, covered with long white hairs, about one third as long as the petioles. 

 Flowers subtended by minute scarious deciduous bracts on short slender pedicels in bisexual many- 

 flowered pedunculate villose cymes about as long as the petioles; calyx five-lobed, the lobes acute, 

 oblong, incurved at the apex, villose on the outer surface ; style divided to the base. Fruit short- 

 oblong, slightly yellowish brown, from 4 to 5 millimetres in diameter. 



A fast-growing short-lived tree, in Florida occasionally 8 or 9 metres high, with a tall trunk 

 from 4 to 6 centimetres in diameter and covered with thin chocolate-brown bark roughened by 

 numerous small wart-like excrescences and separating into small appressed papery scales, small 

 crowded branches ascending at narrow angles, and stout hoary tomentose red-brown two-ranked 

 branchlets. Flowers in March and April. Fruit ripens in the autumn or winter. 



Florida : rich hammocks near the shores of Bay Biscayne and in the Everglades and on the 

 southern keys ; common, often springing up when the hammocks have been burnt or cleared of 

 their deciduous-leaved forests, as Populus tremuloides Michaux and Primus pennsylvanica Lin- 

 naeus appear in the north on burned-over forest lands. Key West, J. L. Blodgett; Fort Dallas, 

 J. G. Cooper ex herb. G. Thurber; Bay Biscayne, E. Palmer, 1874 (No. 516); Miami, A. P. 

 Garber, July, 1877 (No. 229) (all in herb. Gray) ; between Bay Biscayne and the Everglades, 

 A. H. Curtiss, May (No. 2543) ; old fields west of Bay Biscayne, A. H. Curtiss, 1882; Key 

 Largo, A. H. Curtiss, November 7, 1885, C. 8. Sargent, April 15, 1886; Miami, Mrs. A. T. 

 Slosson, March, 1898 ; near Homestead, A. R. Sargent, March 21, 1908 ; Paradise Key in the 

 Everglades, 1 E. A. Bessey, May 5, 1908 (No. 35) ; Everglades, E. A. Bessey, May, 1908 (No. 



1 The so-called keys of the Everglades lie near the southern end of the peninsula between Bay Biscayne and Ponce de Leon 

 Bay. They are low island-like bodies of land raised above the general level surface of the Everglades, and are mostly covered 

 with an open forest of pine trees. In the midst of this forest are hammocks of rich soil on which several of the tropical trees 

 and shrubs of Florida grow to a larger size than in other parts of the state. These keys are difficult to reach and have not yet 

 been systematically explored. 



