130 TREES AND SHRUBS. 



Ximenia laurina, Delile, Ann. Sci. Nat. ser. 2, xx. 89 (1843). 



Ximenia fluminensis, Roemer, Fam. Nat. Syn. i. 22 (1846). 



Ximenia exarmata, F. Mueller, Trans. Phil. Inst. Vict. iii. 22 {teste Bentham, Fl. Austral, i. 



391) [1859]. 

 Ximenia Americana, S laurina (Delile), Valeton, Crit. Overz. Olacin. 76 (1886). 

 Ximenia Americana, e elliptica (Forster), Valeton, Crit. Overz. Olacin. 76 (1886). 

 Ximenia Americana, var. pubens, Grisebach, Abhand. K. Gesell. Wiss. Gbtt.xxiv. 149 (Symbol. 



Fl. Argent.) (1879) . — Valeton, Crit. Overz. Olacin. 76. 

 Ximenia coriacba, Valeton, Crit. Overz. Olacin. 76 (in part, not Engler) (1886). 



Leaves oblong or elliptical, rounded and often emarginate and apiculate at the apex, gradually 

 narrowed at the base, glabrous, bright green and lustrous above, pale below, from 3 to 6 centi- 

 metres long and from 1.5 to 3 centimetres wide, with slightly thickened revolute margins, promi- 

 nent midribs and obscure primary veins ; petioles slender, narrowly wing-margined at the apex, 

 from 5 to 10 millimetres in length. Flowers bell-shaped, from 6 to 7 millimetres long, fragrant, on 

 slender pedicels, in the axils of minute acuminate caducous bractlets, in three- or four-flowered clus- 

 ters on peduncles from 5 to 7 millimetres long ; calyx-lobes acute ; petals oblong-obovate, narrowed 

 and obtuse at the apex, yellowish white, leathery, conspicuously bearded from the base nearly to 

 the apex. Fruit broadly ovoid to subglobose, yellow, 1.5 or 1.6 centimetres long, with thin acid 

 flesh, and ovoid light red stone covered with minute pits and abruptly apiculate at the apex, and 

 yellow seeds with bright orange-colored cotyledons. 



A tree, in Florida occasionally 10 metres high, with a tall trunk from 6 to 8 centimetres in 

 diameter, covered with red close astringent bark, spreading branches armed with stout straight 

 spines mostly from 1.5 to 2 centimetres long, 1 and slender branchlets slightly angled and light red- 

 dish brown when they first appear, becoming terete and light gray or red-brown and marked by 

 numerous lenticels, or more often a shrub. Flowers in April and May. Fruit ripens during the 

 summer. 2 



The wood is very heavy, tough, hard, close-grained, compact, brown tinged with red, with 

 lighter colored sapwood ; it contains numerous regularly distributed open ducts and a few thin 

 medullary rays. The specific gravity of the dry wood is 0.9196. Hydrocyanic acid has been 

 obtained from the fruit. 3 



In Florida, 4 near Eustis, Lake County, which is its most northern reported station, George B. 

 Nash, May, 1894 (No. 622), to the southern keys ; of its largest size on the west coast and on 

 Long Key in the Everglades, E. A. Bessey, May, 1908 (No. 101). Ximenia americana is com- 

 mon on the shores of the Antilles, ranging southward to Brazil. It is found in west tropical 

 Africa, the Indian Peninsula, on many of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, in New Guinea, 

 Australia, and on several of the islands of the South Pacific Ocean. 



c. s. s. 



1 In Florida the branches are usually if not always armed, but farther south they are sometimes unarmed by the abortion of 



J This tree was first described by Plumier in 1703 as Ximenia aculeate flore villoso, fructu luteo, Nov. PI. Am. Gen. 6, t. 21; PI 

 Amtr. Fate, ed. Burmann, 260, t. 261, f. 1. See also Linnaeus, Hort. Cliff. 483. 



8 FlUckiger & Hanbury, Pharmacographia, 222. 



* Ximenia americana appears to have been first noticed in Florida somewhere on the upper St. John's River by William Bar- 

 tram in 1774 (see Travels, 114). 



