TREES AND SHRUBS. 



CAEYA AEKAXSANA, Sakg. 



Caicya Arkansana, n. sp. 



Leaves from five- to seven-, usually seven-foliate, from 2 to 3.5 decimetres in length, with 

 slender petioles thickly coated when they first appear with long matted yellow hairs, becoming gla- 

 brous in early summer; leaflets lanceolate, acuminate and long-pointed at the apex, their margins 

 thickened and serrate with small cartilaginous teeth pointing forward, the terminal leaflet acumi- 

 nate and symmetrical at the base and raised on a petiole five or six metres in length, the lateral 

 symmetrical and acuminate or unsymmetrical and rounded at the base and sessile or short-petiolu- 

 late ; as they unfold thickly coated with tawny tomentum and covered with small pale scales, and at 

 maturity thin, dark yellow-green, glabrous and lustrous on the upper surface, pale yellow-green and 

 glabrous on the lower surface with the exception of small axillary tufts of white hairs, from 1 to 1.8 

 decimetres long and from 4 to 7 centimetres wide. Aments of staminate flowers from 8 to 10 centi- 

 metres in length, covered with fulvous tomentum, their bracts lanceolate, acuminate, long-pointed 

 and villose ; bract of the flower ovate, acute, covered with yellow scabrate pubescence, a third 

 longer than the villose calyx-lobes; stamens 4; anthers ciliate at the apex, red ; pistillate flowers in 

 short-stalked spikes, their involucre only slightly angled, thickly covered with rufous tomentum 

 mixed with white hairs, the bract acuminate, twice longer than the bractlets and calyx-lobe. 

 Fruit obovate or ovate, rounded at the apex, abruptly or gradually narrowed at the base, yellow- 

 brown, roughened by small excrescences and covered by small yellow scales mixed with pale pubes- 

 cence, from 3.5 to 4 centimetres long and from 3 to 3.5 centimetres in diameter ; involucre about 

 3 millimetres thick, splitting to the middle or sometimes nearly to the base by narrow-winged 

 sutures ; nut slightly obovate, rounded at the ends, compressed, slightly four-angled sometimes to 

 the middle but usually only for about one-third of its length, pale brown, from 2.5 to 3.5 centi- 

 metres long and broad, and from 2.2 to 2.5 centimetres thick, with a short broad basal point and 

 a hard shell from 5 to 6 millimetres in thickness, and thin deeply furrowed sweet cotyledons. 1 



A tree, sometimes from 20 to 25 metres high with a trunk 2 decimetres in diameter, covered 

 with dark gray irregularly fissured bark separating into thin scales and from 1.5 to 3 centimetres 

 in thickness, small branches forming a narrow head, and slender branchlets covered when they first 

 appear with matted yellow hairs, becoming at the end of their first season brown to dark purplish 

 gray and scurfy pubescent, and dark gray-brown and glabrous the following year. Winter buds 

 broadly ovate, acute, about 5 millimetres long and nearly as broad, the outer bud-scales covered 

 with small white scales, the inner with matted brown and white hairs. The wood is heavy, hard 

 and strong, difficult to split, brown with thick nearly white sapwood ; not much used except as 

 fuel. Flowers about the first of May, fruit ripens in October. 



Dry ridges and rocky hillsides on the southern slopes of the Boston Mountains in west central 

 Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. Arkansas: Van Buren, Crawford County, G. M. Brown, 

 April, May, June and October (Nos. 14, type, 9, 20). 



Among the Pignuts Carya arkansana is distinguished hy the abundant tawny tomentum of the young leaves, by its 

 pubescent branchlets, by the yellow scales which cover the fruit, and by the remarkably thick shell of the nut. The 

 slender branchlets and small buds seem, in spite of the red anthers and the thick shell of the nut, to make it desirable 

 to place it with the Pignuts rather than with the Mockernuts. C. S. S. 



• On some trees the nuts are more gradually narrowed and slightly four-ridged at the base, the ridges running into a slender 

 acuminate tip the connective with the involucre and sometimes 6 or 7 millimetres long. The pear-shaped involucres containing 

 nuts of this fo'rm are narrowed below into a distinct stalk-like base which surrounds the long point of the nut. 



