formed in summer, and fibrous roots. Leaves usually clustered at the end
of the branches, revolute and entire on the margin, persistent or
deciduous. Flowers in terminal umbellate corymbs from buds with numerous
caducous scales; calyx 5-parted or toothed, persistent under the fruit,
corolla 5—10-lobed, deciduous; stamens 5 or 10, rarely more, more or
less unequal, ultimately spreading; filaments subulate-filiform, pilose
at the base; disk thick and fleshy, crenately lobed; ovary 5—10-celled;
style slender, crowned with a capitate stigma and persistent on the
fruit; ovules numerous in each cell, attached in many series to an axile
2-lipped placenta projected from the inner angle of the cell,
anatropous. Fruit a woody many-seeded capsule. Seed scobiform; seed-coat
loose, reticulate, produced at the ends beyond the nucleus into a short
often laciniate appendage; embryo minute, cylindric, axile in fleshy
albumen; cotyledons oblong, shorter than the radicle turned toward the
hilum.
Rhododendron with some four or five hundred species occurs in eastern
Thibet, on the Himalayas, in southwestern China, the Malay peninsula and
Archipelago, New Guinea, northern China and Corea, Japan, the mountains
of central Europe, on the Caucasus, and in eastern and western North
America, the largest number of species being found in southwestern China
and on the Himalayas. Of the twenty-three or twenty-four North American
species one only is arborescent.
Rhododendron possesses astringent narcotic properties. It produces hard
close-grained compact wood sometimes used in turnery and for fuel. Many
of the species are cultivated in gardens for the beauty of their large
and conspicuous flowers.
The generic name is from ῥόδον and δένδρον, the Rose-tree.
1. Rhododendron maximum L. Great Laurel. Rose Bay.
[Illustration: Fig. 709]
Leaves revolute in the bud, ovate-lanceolate or obovate-lanceolate,
acute or short-pointed at apex, and narrowed, cuneate or rounded at
base, when they unfold covered with a thick pale or ferrugineous
tomentum of gland-tipped hairs, and at maturity glabrous, thick and
coriaceous, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, usually pale
or whitish on the lower surface, 4′—12′ long and 1½′—2½′ wide, with a
broad pale midrib and obscure reticulate veinlets; persistent for two or
three years; petioles stout, ridged above, rounded below, 1′—1½′ in
length. Flowers: inflorescence-buds surrounded at first by several loose
narrow leaf-like scales, and when fully grown in September cone-shaped,
1½′ long and ½′ broad, with many imbricated ovate scales rounded and
contracted at apex into a long slender point, opening late in June after
the shoots of the year from buds in the axils of upper leaves have
reached their full length; flowers on slender pink pedicels covered with
glandular white hairs and furnished at base with two linear scarious
bractlets, from the axils of the scales of the inner ranks of the
inflorescence-bud, in 16—24-flowered umbellate clusters 4′—5′ in
diameter, with accrescent scarious resinous puberulous bracts, those of
the outer ranks becoming 1′ long and ⅓′ wide, and shorter than the
lanceolate bracts of the inner ranks contracted into a long slender
point; calyx light green and puberulous, with rounded remote lobes;
corolla prominently 5-angled or ridged in the bud, campanulate, gibbous
on the posterior side, puberulous in the throat, light rose color,
purplish, or white, 1′ long, cleft to the middle into 5 oval rounded
lobes, with conspicuous central veins, the upper lobe marked on the
inner face by a cluster of yellow-green spots, and furnished on the
outer surface at the bottom of each sinus with a conspicuous dark red
gland; stamens 8—12, white, inserted on the bright green disk; filaments
enlarged and flattened at base, slightly bent inward above the middle,
and bearded with stiff white hairs, the 4 or 5 short ones at the back of
the flower for more than half their length and the others only near the
base; ovary ovoid, green, coated with short glandular pale hairs,
crowned with a long slender glabrous white declining style club-shaped
and inflexed at apex, and terminating in a 5-rayed scarlet stigma. Fruit
dark red-brown, ovoid, ½′ long, glandular-hispid, ripening and shedding
its seeds in the autumn, the clusters of open capsules remaining on the
branches until the following summer; seeds oblong, flattened, the coat
prolonged at the ends into scarious fringed appendages.
A bushy tree, 30°—40° high, with a short crooked often prostrate trunk
occasionally 10′—12′ in diameter, stout contorted branches forming a
round head, and branchlets green tinged with red and covered with dark
red or slightly ferrugineous glandular-hispid hairs when they first
appear, dark green and glabrous in their first winter, gradually turning
bright red-brown in their second year, and ultimately gray tinged with
red, the thin bark separating on branches four or five years old into
persistent scales; more often a broad shrub, with many divergent twisted
stems 10°—12° high. Winter-buds: leaf-buds conic, dark green, axillary,
or terminal on barren shoots, with many closely imbricated scales, those
of the inner ranks accrescent, increasing in length from the outer to
the inner, and at maturity 1½′ long, ¼′ wide, gradually narrowed at
base, and terminating at apex in a long slender point, light green,
glabrous, closely held against the shoot by a resinous exudation from
the glandular hairs, and in falling marking the branchlet with numerous
conspicuous narrow remote scars persistent for three or four years. Bark
of the trunk about 1/16′ thick, light red-brown, broken on the surface
into small thin appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, rather
brittle, close-grained, light clear brown, with thin lighter colored
sapwood; occasionally made into the handles of tools and used as a
substitute for boxwood in engraving. A decoction of the leaves is
occasionally employed in domestic practice in the treatment of
rheumatism.
Distribution. Nova Scotia, Mt. Chocorua, New Hampshire, and southward in
New England and eastern New York and along the Appalachian Mountains to
northern Georgia and westward to the northern shores of Lake Erie and to
southeastern Ohio (Hocking and Fairfield Counties); rare at the north
and an inhabitant of deep cold swamps in a few isolated stations; more
abundant on the mountains of western Pennsylvania, becoming exceedingly
common farther south and occupying the steep banks of streams up to
altitudes of 3000°; of its largest size on the high mountains of eastern
Tennessee and the Carolinas, and here often forming thickets hundreds of
acres in extent.
Often cultivated as an ornament of parks and gardens in the United
States, and in Europe, and one of the parents of a number of distinct
and beautiful hybrids.
3. KALMIA L.
Trees or shrubs, with scaly bark, terete branchlets without a terminal
bud, minute axillary leaf-buds, elongated axillary inflorescence-buds
covered by imbricated scales, and fibrous roots. Leaves ovate-oblong or
linear, short-petiolate, with flat entire margins, coriaceous,
persistent or deciduous in one species. Flowers on slender pedicels
bibracteolate at the base, from the axils of foliaceous coriaceous ovate
or acute persistent bracts, in axillary umbels; calyx 5, rarely
6-parted, the divisions imbricated in the bud, persistent under the
fruit; corolla 5, rarely 6-lobed, rose-colored, purple, or white,
saucer-shaped, with a short tube and 10 pouches just below the 5 or
6-parted limb, the lobes ovate, acute, before anthesis prominently 10 or
12-ribbed from the pouches to the acute apex of the bud, the salient
keel of the ribs running to the point of the lobes and to the sinuses;
stamens 10, shorter than the corolla; filaments filiform; anthers
oblong, each cell opening by a short apical oblong longitudinal pore, at
first free in the bud, the filaments then erect, later received in the
pouches of the corolla, the filaments becoming bent back by its
enlargement and expansion, straightening elastically and incurving on
the release of the anthers, and in straightening discharging the
pollen-grains; disk prominently 10-lobed; ovary subglobose, 5-celled;
style filiform, exserted, crowned with a capitate stigma; ovules
numerous in each cell, inserted on a 2-lipped placenta, pendulous or
spreading from near the top of the thin columella, few-ranked,
anatropous. Fruit a woody many-seeded globose slightly 5-lobed 5-celled
capsule, tardily septicidally 5-valved, the valves crustaceous,
ultimately opening down the middle by a narrow slit and separating from
the persistent placenta-bearing axis. Seeds oblong or subglobose,
minute; seed-coat crustaceous or membranaceous; embryo in fleshy
albumen, terete, near the hilum; radicle erect, rather shorter than the
oblong cotyledons.
Kalmia with six species is North American and Cuban, one species
occasionally becoming under favorable conditions a small tree.
The generic name is in honor of the Swedish traveler and botanist, Peter
Kalm (1715—1779).
1. Kalmia latifolia L. Laurel. Mountain Laurel.
[Illustration: Fig. 710]
Leaves sometimes in pairs or in 3’s, conduplicate in the bud, each leaf
in the bud inclosed by the one immediately below it, oblong or
elliptic-lanceolate, acute or rounded and tipped at apex with a callous
point, and gradually narrowed at base, rarely oval to oblong-obovate and
rounded at ends (f. _obtusata_ Rehd.), when they unfold slightly tinged
with pink and covered with glandular white hairs, and at maturity thick
and rigid, dark rather dull green above, light yellow-green below, 3′—4′
long and 1′—1½′ wide, with a broad yellow midrib and obscure immersed
veins; beginning to fall during their second summer; petioles stout,
terete or slightly flattened, about ⅔′ in length. Flowers opening from
early in April in southern Mississippi to the 20th of June at the north;
inflorescence-buds appearing in the autumn from the axils of upper
leaves, beginning to lengthen with the first warm days of spring and
usually developing 2 or several lateral branches, the whole forming a
compound many-flowered corymb of numerous crowded fascicles more or less
covered with dark scurfy scales, 4′—5′ in diameter, and overtopped at
the flowering time by the leafy branches of the year; flowers nearly 1′
in diameter, on long slender red or green pedicels covered with
glandular hairs, and furnished at base with 2 minute acute bractlets,
developed from the axils of acute persistent bracts sometimes ⅓′ long;
calyx divided nearly to the base into narrow acute thin green lobes;
corolla white (f. _alba_ Rehd.), rose-color, or deep pink (f. _rubra_
Rehd.) viscid-pubescent, marked on the inner surface with a waving dark
rose-colored line and with delicate purple penciling above the sacs,
rarely with a broad purple or chocolate-colored band (f. _fuscata_
Rehd.). Fruit ripening in September, crowned with the persistent style,
3/16′ in diameter, and covered with viscid hairs, remaining on the
branches until the following year; seeds oblong, light brown, scattered
by the opening of the valves.
A tree, rarely 30°—40° high, with a short crooked and contorted trunk
sometimes 18′—20′ in diameter, stout forked divergent branches forming a
round-topped compact head, and slender branchlets light green tinged
with red and covered with soft white glandular-viscid hairs when they
first appear, soon becoming glabrous, and in their first winter green
tinged with red and very lustrous, turning bright red-brown during their
second year and paler the following season, the bark then separating
into large thin papery scales exposing the cinnamon-red inner bark, and
marked with large deeply impressed leaf-scars showing near the centre a
crowded cluster of fibro-vascular bundle-scars; more often a dense broad
shrub 6°—10° high, with numerous crooked stems. Winter-buds formed
before midsummer in the axils of the leaves just below those producing
the inflorescence-buds, their inner scales accrescent, and at maturity
often 1′ long and ½′ wide, ovate, acute, light green, covered with
glandular white hairs, and in falling marking the base of the shoots
with conspicuous broad scars. Bark of the trunk hardly more than 1/16′
thick, dark brown tinged with red, and divided by longitudinal furrows
into narrow ridges separating into long narrow scales. Wood heavy, hard,
strong, rather brittle, close-grained, brown tinged with red, with
slightly lighter colored sapwood; used for the handles of tools, in
turnery, and for fuel.
Distribution. New Brunswick to the northern shores of Lake Erie and
southward in the Atlantic coast region to Virginia and to southern Ohio,
Martin and Crawford Counties, Indiana and central Tennessee, along the
Appalachian Mountains and their foothills to Georgia, and from western
Florida through Alabama to eastern and southern Mississippi and the
valley of the Bogue Lusa River, Washington Parish, Louisiana; often
growing in low moist ground near the margins of swamps or on dry slopes
under the shade of deciduous-leaved trees, or on rich rocky hillsides;
most abundant and often forming dense impenetrable thickets on the
southern Appalachian Mountains up to altitudes of 3000°—4000°; usually
shrubby, and only arborescent in a few secluded valleys between the Blue
Ridge and the Alleghany Mountains of North and South Carolina; abundant
and of large size along small streams in Liberty County, western
Florida. The var. _myrtifolia_ K. Koch with small lance-oblong leaves,
and small compact clusters of small flowers, a compact dwarf shrub, and
an old inhabitant of European gardens, is occasionally wild in
Massachusetts; in an abnormal form (f. _polypetala_ Rehd.) found in
western Massachusetts the corolla is divided into 5 narrow petals.
Often cultivated as an ornament of parks and gardens in the eastern
states, and in Europe.
4. OXYDENDRUM DC.
A tree, with thick deeply furrowed bark, slender terete glabrous light
red or brown branchlets, without a terminal bud, marked by elevated
nearly triangular leaf-scars displaying a lunate row of crowded
fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and numerous elevated oblong dark
lenticels, acid foliage, and fibrous roots. Winter-buds axillary,
minute, partly immersed in the bark, obtuse, covered with opposite
broad-ovate dark red scales rounded at apex, those of the inner ranks
accrescent. Leaves alternate, revolute in the bud, oblong or lanceolate,
acute, gradually contracted at base into a long slender petiole, serrate
with minute incurved callous teeth, penniveined, with a conspicuous
bright yellow midrib and reticulate veinlets, thin and firm, dark green
and lustrous on the upper surface, pale and glaucous on the lower
surface, glabrous or at first slightly puberulous, deciduous. Flowers on
erect clavate pedicels coated with hoary pubescence and bibracteolate
above the middle, with linear acute caducous bractlets, in puberulous
panicles of secund racemes appearing in summer and terminal on axillary
leading shoots of the year, the lower racemes in the axils of upper
leaves; calyx free, divided nearly to the base, the divisions valvate in
the bud, ovate-lanceolate, acute, pubescent or puberulous on the outer
surface, persistent under the fruit; corolla hypogynous, cylindric to
ovate-cylindric, white, puberulous, 5-lobed, the lobes minute, ovate,
acute, reflexed; stamens 10, included; filaments subulate, broad,
pilose, inserted on the very base of the corolla; anthers linear-oblong,
narrower than the filaments, the cells opening from the apex to the
middle; disk thin, obscurely 10-lobed; ovary broad-ovoid, pubescent,
5-celled; style columnar, thick, exserted, crowned with a simple stigma;
ovules attached to an axile placenta rising from the base of the cell,
ascending, amphitropous. Fruit a 5-celled ovoid-pyramidal many-seeded
capsule crowned with the remnants of the persistent style, 5-lobed,
puberulous, loculicidally 5-valved, the valves woody, separating from
the central persistent placentiferous axis, many-seeded. Seeds
ascending, elongated; seed-coat membranaceous, loose, reticulated,
produced at the ends into long slender points; embryo minute, axile in
fleshy albumen, cylindric; radicle terete, next the hilum.
The genus consists of a single species.
The generic name is from ὀξύς and δένδρον, in allusion to the acid
foliage.
1. Oxydendrum arboreum DC. Sorrel-tree. Sour Wood.
[Illustration: Fig. 711]
Leaves when they unfold bronze-green, very lustrous and glabrous with
the exception of a slight pubescence on the upper side of the midrib and
a few scattered hairs on the under side of the midrib and on the
petioles, and at maturity 5′—7′ long and 1½′—2½′ wide; turning bright
scarlet in the autumn; petioles ⅔′ in length. Flowers opening late in
July or early in August, ⅓′ long, in panicles 7′—8′ in length. Fruit
⅓′—½′ long, hanging in drooping clusters sometimes a foot in length,
ripening in September, the empty capsules often persistent on the
branches until late in the autumn; seeds about ⅛′ long, pale brown.
A tree, occasionally 50°—60° high, with a tall straight trunk 12′—20′ in
diameter, slender spreading branches forming a narrow oblong
round-topped head, and glabrous branchlets yellow-green and marked by
orange-colored lenticels when they first appear, becoming in their first
winter orange-colored to reddish brown. Winter-buds about 1/16′ long,
their inner scales at maturity 1′ in length, ⅛′ wide, spatulate, acute
at apex, and slightly puberulous on the inner surface and on the
margins. Bark of the trunk ⅔′—1′ thick, gray tinged with red and divided
by longitudinal furrows into broad rounded ridges covered with small
thick appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, brown
tinged with red, with lighter colored sapwood of 80—90 layers of annual
growth; sometimes used locally for the handles of tools and the bearings
of machinery. The leaves have a pleasant acidulous taste, and are
reputed to be tonic, refrigerant, and diuretic, and are occasionally
used in domestic practice in the treatment of fevers.
Distribution. Well-drained gravelly soil on ridges rising above the
banks of streams; coast of Virginia (Norfolk County) to that of North
Carolina (near Newbern, Craven County), southwestern Pennsylvania to
southern Ohio and Indiana (Perry County), and to western Kentucky and
Tennessee, along the Appalachian Mountains and their foothills, and
southward to western Florida, the shores of Mobile Bay, the coast region
of Mississippi, and West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana; up to altitudes of
3500° on the southern mountains; of its largest size on the western
slopes of the Big Smoky Mountains, Tennessee.
Often cultivated as an ornamental plant in the eastern states and hardy
as far north as eastern Massachusetts, and occasionally in western and
central Europe.
5. LYONIA Nutt.
Trees or shrubs, with slender terete branchlets, and fibrous roots.
Leaves petiolate, thin or coriaceous. Flowers on slender pedicels from
the axils of ovate acute bracts, in axillary and terminal umbellate
fascicles or panicled racemes; calyx persistent, 4—5-toothed or parted,
the divisions valvate in the bud; corolla globular, 4 or 5-toothed or
lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens 8—10, included;
filaments flat, incurved, usually slightly adnate to the base of the
corolla, dilated and bearded at base, geniculate; anthers oblong, the
cells opening below the apex by large oblong pores; disk 10-lobed; ovary
5-celled, depressed in the centre; style columnar, stigmatic at apex;
ovules attached to a placenta borne near the summit of the axis,
anatropous. Fruit ovoid, many-seeded, loculicidally 5-valved, the valves
septiferous and separating from the placentiferous axis, 5-ribbed by the
thickening of the valves at the dorsal sutures, the ribs more or less
separable in dehiscence. Seeds minute, pendulous, narrow-oblong;
seed-coat loose, thin, reticulate, produced at the ends beyond the
nucleus into short fringe-like wings; embryo axile in fleshy albumen,
cylindric elongated; cotyledons much shorter than the terete radicle
turned toward the hilum.
Lyonia with about twenty species is confined to North America, the West
Indies, and Mexico. Of the four or five species which occur in the
United States one is occasionally a small tree.
The genus is named in honor of John Lyon, an English gardener who made
important collections of plants in the United States early in the
nineteenth century.
1. Lyonia ferruginea Nutt.
_Xolisma ferruginea_ Hell.
[Illustration: Fig. 712]
Leaves cuneate-obovate, rhombic-obovate or cuneate-oblong, acute or
rounded at apex, usually tipped with a cartilaginous mucro, gradually
narrowed at base, and entire, with thickened revolute margins, scurfy
when they unfold, and at maturity thick and firm, pale green, smooth and
shining or sometimes obscurely lepidote above, covered below with
ferrugineous or pale scales, 1′—3′ long and ¼′—1½′ wide, with a
prominent midrib and primary veins; appearing in early spring and
persistent until the summer or autumn of their second year; petioles
short, thick, much enlarged at base. Flowers ⅛′ in diameter, chiefly
produced on branches of the year or occasionally on those of the
previous year, opening from February until April when the leaves are
fully grown, on slender recurved pedicels much shorter than the leaves,
in crowded axillary short-stemmed or sessile ferrugineous-lepidote
fascicles, with minute acute deciduous bracts and bractlets; calyx
5-lobed, with acute lobes, covered on the outer surface with
ferrugineous scales, and about one third as long as the white pubescent
corolla, with short reflexed acute teeth slightly thickened and ciliate
on the margins; filaments shortened by a conspicuous geniculate fold in
the middle; ovary coated with thick white tomentum; style stout, as long
or a little longer than the corolla. Fruit on a stout erect stem,
oblong, 5-angled, ¼′ long; seed pale brown.
A tree, occasionally 20°—30° high, with a slender crooked or often
prostrate trunk sometimes 10′ in diameter, thin rigid divergent branches
forming a tall oblong irregular head, and slender branchlets coated when
they first appear with minute ferrugineous scales and covered in their
second year with glabrous or pubescent light or dark red-brown bark
smooth or exfoliating in small thin scales. Winter-buds minute, acute,
and covered with ferrugineous scales. Bark of the trunk ⅛′—¼′ thick,
divided into long narrow ridges by shallow longitudinal furrows, reddish
brown and separating into short thick scales. Wood heavy, hard,
close-grained although not strong, light brown tinged with red, with
thick lighter colored sapwood.
Distribution. Hummocks and sandy woods; coast region of South Carolina
and Georgia, northern Florida to the centre of the peninsula, the shores
of Tampa Bay, and to the neighborhood of Apalachicola (Franklin County);
in the United States arborescent in the rich soil of the woody hummocks
rising in the sandy Pine-covered coast plain, and as a low shrub in the
dry sandy sterile soil of Pine-barrens; in the West Indies and Mexico.
6. ARBUTUS L.
Trees or shrubs, with astringent bark exfoliating from young stems in
large thin scales, smooth terete red branches, and thick hard roots.
Leaves petiolate, entire or dentate, obscurely penniveined, persistent.
Flowers on clavate pedicels bibracteolate at base from the axils of
ovate bracts, in simple terminal compound racemes or panicles, with
scarious scaly persistent bracts and bractlets; calyx free from the
ovary, 5-parted nearly to the base, the divisions imbricated in the bud,
ovate, acute, scarious, persistent; corolla ovoid-urceolate, white,
5-toothed, the teeth obtuse and recurved; stamens 10, shorter than the
corolla; filaments subulate, dilated and pilose at base, free, inserted
in the bottom of the corolla; anthers short, compressed laterally,
dorsally 2-awned, the cells opening at the top internally by a terminal
pore; ovary glandular-roughened, glabrous or tomentose, sessile or
slightly immersed in the glandular 10-lobed disk, 5 or rarely 4-celled;
style columnar, simple, exserted; stigma obscurely 5-lobed; ovules
attached to a central placenta developed from the inner angle of each
cell, amphitropous. Fruit drupaceous, globose, smooth or
glandular-coated, 5-celled, many-seeded; flesh dry and mealy; stone
cartilaginous, often incompletely developed. Seeds small, compressed or
angled, narrowed and often apiculate at apex; seed-coat coriaceous, dark
red-brown, slightly pilose; embryo axile in copious horny albumen,
clavate; radicle terete, erect, turned toward the hilum.
Arbutus with ten or twelve species inhabits southern and western North
America, Central America, western, southern and eastern Europe, Asia
Minor, northern Africa, and the Canary Islands. Three species occur
within the territory of the United States. Arbutus produces hard
close-grained valuable wood often made into charcoal, used in the
manufacture of gunpowder. The fruit possesses narcotic properties, and
the bark and leaves are astringent.
_Arbutus_ is the classical name of the species of southern Europe.
CONSPECTUS OF THE SPECIES Of THE UNITED STATES.
Bark of old trunks dark red-brown.
Ovary glabrous; leaves oval or oblong.
1. A. Menziesii (B, G).
Ovary pubescent; leaves oval, ovate, or lanceolate.
2. A. texana (C).
Bark of old trunks ashy gray; ovary glabrous, conspicuously porulose;
leaves lanceolate or rarely narrow-oblong.
3. A. arizonica (H).
1. Arbutus Menziesii Pursh. Madroña.
[Illustration: Fig. 713]
Leaves oval or oblong, rounded or contracted into a short point at apex,
and rounded, subcordate or cuneate at base, with slightly thickened
revolute entire or occasionally on young plants sharply serrate margins,
when they unfold light green or often pink, especially on the lower
surface, and glabrous or slightly puberulous, and at maturity thick and
coriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, pale or often nearly white
below, 3′—5′ long and 1½′—3′ wide, with a thick pale midrib and
conspicuously reticulated veinlets; persistent until the early summer of
their second year and then turning orange and scarlet and falling
gradually and irregularly; petioles stout, grooved, ½′—1′ in length,
often slightly wing-margined toward the apex; often producing late in
summer a second crop of smaller leaves. Flowers about ⅓′ long, with a
glabrous ovary, appearing from March to May on short slender puberulous
pedicels from the axils of acute scarious bracts ciliate on the margins,
in spicate pubescent racemes forming a cluster 5′—6′ long and broad.
Fruit ripening in the autumn, subglobose or occasionally obovoid or
oval, ½′ long, bright orange-red, with thin glandular flesh and a
5-celled more or less perfectly developed thin-walled cartilaginous
stone; seeds several in each cell, tightly pressed together and angled,
dark brown and pilose.
A tree, 80°—125° high, with a tall straight trunk 4°—5° in diameter,
stout upright or spreading branches forming a narrow oblong or broad
round-topped head, and slender branchlets light red, pea-green, or
orange-colored and glabrous when they first appear, or on vigorous young
plants sometimes covered with pale scattered deciduous hairs, becoming
in their first winter bright reddish brown. Winter-buds obtuse, ⅓′ long,
with numerous imbricated broadly-ovate bright brown scales keeled on the
back, apiculate at apex, and slightly ciliate. Bark of young stems and
of the branches smooth, bright red, separating into large thin scales,
becoming on old trunks ⅓′—½′ thick, dark reddish brown, and covered with
small thick plate-like scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained,
light brown shaded with red, with thin lighter colored sapwood of 8—12
layers of annual growth; used for furniture and largely for charcoal.
The bark is sometimes employed in tanning leather.
Distribution. High well-drained slopes usually in rich soil or
occasionally in gravelly valleys; islands at Seymore Narrows, and
southward through the coast region of British Columbia, Washington and
Oregon; over the coast ranges of northern California, extending east to
Mt. Shasta and south along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada from
altitudes of 2500°—4000° to Placer County; on many of the coast ranges
south of San Francisco Bay to the mountains of southern California;
common and of its largest size in the Redwood-forests of northwestern
California; much smaller north of California; rare on the Sierra Nevada
and southward except on the Santa Cruz Mountains, and often shrubby in
habit.
Occasionally cultivated in the gardens of western and southern Europe.
2. Arbutus texana Buckl. Madroña.
_Arbutus xalapensis_ S. Watson, not H. B. K.
[Illustration: Fig. 714]
Leaves oval, ovate, or lanceolate, rounded, acute and often apiculate at
apex, and rounded or cuneate at base, with slightly thickened usually
entire or remotely crenulate-toothed or coarsely serrate margins, often
tinged with red when they unfold and pubescent below, and at maturity
thick and coriaceous, dark green and glabrous on the upper surface, pale
and usually slightly pubescent on the lower surface, 1′—3′ long and
⅔′—1½′ wide, with a thick midrib often villose-pubescent below; petioles
stout, pubescent, sometimes becoming nearly glabrous, 1′—1½′ in length.
Flowers ¼′ long, with ciliate calyx-lobes and a pubescent ovary,
appearing in March on stout recurved hoary-tomentose club-shaped
pedicels from the axils of ovate acute hoary-tomentose often persistent
bracts, in compact conic hoary-tomentose panicles 2½′ long. Fruit
pubescent until half grown, becoming glabrous, usually produced very
sparingly, ripening in summer, dark red, ⅓′ in diameter, with thin
granular flesh and a rather thick more or less completely formed stone;
seeds numerous in each cell, compressed, puberulous.
A tree, in Texas rarely more than 18°—20° high, with a short often
crooked trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, separating a foot or two above the
ground into several stout spreading branches, and branchlets light red
and thickly coated with pubescence when they first appear, becoming dark
red-brown and covered with small plate-like scales; often a broad
irregularly shaped bush, with numerous contorted stems. Winter-buds
about ⅛′ long, with hoary tomentose scales, the outer ovate, acute, the
inner obovate and rounded at apex. Bark of young stems and of the
branches thin, tinged with red, separating into large papery scales
exposing the light red or flesh-colored inner bark, becoming at the base
of old trunks sometimes ¼′ thick, deeply furrowed, dark reddish brown,
and broken into thick square plates. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained,
brown tinged with red, with a lighter colored sapwood of 10—12 layers of
annual growth; sometimes used in Texas for the handles of small tools
and in the manufacture of mathematical instruments.
Distribution. Texas, dry limestone hills, Travis, Comal, Blanco, Kendall
and Bandera Counties, on the Guadaloupe and Eagle Mountains, Culberson
and El Paso Counties; southeastern New Mexico (Eddy County); on the
mountains of Nuevo Leon in the neighborhood of Monterey.
3. Arbutus arizonica Sarg. Madroña.
[Illustration: Fig. 715]
Leaves lanceolate to rarely oblong, acute or rounded and apiculate at
apex, and cuneate or occasionally rounded at base, with thickened entire
or rarely denticulate margins, when they unfold, tinged with red, and
slightly puberulous, especially on the petiole and margins, and at
maturity thin, firm and rigid, light green on the upper surface, pale on
the lower surface, 1½′—3′ long and ½′—1′ wide, with a slender yellow
midrib and obscure reticulate veinlets; appearing in May and after the
summer rains in September, and persistent for at least a year; petioles
slender, often 1′ in length. Flowers ¼′ long, with a corolla much
contracted in the middle, and a glabrous porulose ovary, opening in May
on short stout hairy pedicels from the axils of conspicuous ovate
rounded scarious bracts, in rather loose clusters 2′—2½′ long and broad,
their lower branches from the axils of upper leaves. Fruit ripening in
October and November, globose or short-oblong, dark orange-red,
granulate, ⅓′ in diameter, with thin sweetish flesh, and a papery
usually incompletely developed stone; seeds compressed, puberulous.
A tree, 40°—50° high, with a tall straight trunk 18′—24′ in diameter,
stout spreading branches forming a rather compact round-topped head, and
thick tortuous divergent branchlets reddish brown and more or less
pubescent or light purple, pilose, and covered with a glaucous bloom
when they first appear, becoming bright red at the end of their first
season, their bark thin, separating freely into thin more or less
persistent scales. Winter-buds ⅓′ long, red, the two outer scales
linear, acuminate a third longer than those of the next, rank, acute and
apiculate and ridged on the back. Bark of young stems and of the
branches thin, smooth, dark red, exfoliating in large thin scales,
becoming on old trunks ⅓′—½′ thick, irregularly broken by longitudinal
furrows and divided into square appressed plate-like light gray or
nearly white scales faintly tinged with red on the surface. Wood heavy,
close-grained, soft and brittle, light brown tinged with red, with
lighter colored sapwood of 30—40 layers of annual growth.
Distribution. Dry gravelly benches at altitude of 6000°—8000° on the
Santa Catalina and Santa Rita Mountains, southern Arizona, and on the
San Luis and Animas Mountains of southwestern New Mexico (Grant County);
on the Sierra Nevada of Chihuahua.
7. VACCINIUM L.
Shrubs or rarely small trees, with slender branchlets, and fibrous
roots. Leaves thin or coriaceous, deciduous or persistent. Flowers
small, on bibracteolate pedicels, in many-branched axillary racemes, or
solitary, their bracts small or foliaceous; calyx-tube adnate to the
ovary, 4—5-lobed, the lobes valvate in the bud, persistent; corolla
epigynous, 4 or 5-toothed, the teeth imbricated in the bud,
urceolate-campanulate; stamens 8—10, inserted on the base of the corolla
under the thick obscurely lobed epigynous disk; filaments filiform,
free, usually hirsute; anthers awned on the back, the cells produced
upward into erect spreading tubes dehiscent by a terminal pore; ovary
inferior, 4 or 5-celled, the cells sometimes imperfectly divided by the
development from the back of a false partition; style filiform, erect;
stigma minute; ovules attached to the interior angle of the cell by a
2-lipped placenta, anatropous. Fruit a berry crowned with the
calyx-limb, 4 or 5 or imperfectly 8 or 10-celled, the cells many-seeded.
Seed minute, compressed, ovoid or reniform; seed-coat crustaceous;
embryo clavate, minute, surrounded by fleshy albumen, axile, erect;
cotyledons ovate; radicle terete, turned toward the hilum.
Vaccinium with about one hundred species is distributed through the
boreal and temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, and occurs
within the tropics at high altitudes north and south of the equator. Of
the twenty-five or thirty species which occur in North America one is
small trees. The fruits of many of the species are edible, the most
valuable being the North American _Vaccinium macrocarpum_ L., the
Cranberry.
_Vaccinium_ is the classical name of one of the Old World species.
1. Vaccinium arboreum Marsh. Farkleberry. Sparkleberry.
[Illustration: Fig. 716]
Leaves obovate, oblong-oval or occasionally orbicular, acute, or rounded
and apiculate at apex, gradually or abruptly cuneate at base, obscurely
glandular-dentate or entire, with thickened slightly revolute margins,
light red and more or less pilose or puberulous when they unfold, and at
maturity coriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, paler below,
glabrous or often puberulous on the midrib and veins,
reticulate-venulose, ½′—2½′ long, ¼′—1′ wide, and sessile or
short-petiolate; southward persistent for a year, northward deciduous
during the winter. Flowers appearing from March to May on slender
drooping pedicels ½′ long, bibracteolate near the middle, with 2 minute
acute scarious caducous bractlets, solitary in the axils of leaves of
the year or arranged in terminal puberulous racemes 2′—3′ long from the
axils of leafy or minute acute scarious bracts; corolla white,
open-campanulate, slightly 5-lobed, with acute reflexed lobes, longer
than the 10 stamens; filaments hirsute; anther-cells opening by oblique
elongated pores. Fruit ripening in October, sometimes persistent on the
branches until the end of winter, globose, ¼′ in diameter, black and
lustrous, with dry glandular slightly astringent flesh of a pleasant
flavor.
A tree, 20°—30° high, with a short often crooked trunk occasionally
8′—10′ in diameter, slender more or less contorted branches forming an
irregular round-topped head, and slender branchlets light red and
covered with pale pubescence when they first appear, glabrous or
puberulous and bright red-brown in their first winter, later becoming
dark red and marked by minute elevated nearly orbicular leaf-scars; or
northward generally reduced to a low shrub, with numerous divergent
stems. Winter-buds obtuse, nearly 1/16′ long, with imbricated ovate
acute chestnut-brown scales often persistent on the base of the
branchlet throughout the season. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained,
light brown tinged with red, with thick hardly distinguishable sapwood;
sometimes used for the handles of tools and in the manufacture of other
small articles. Decoctions of the astringent bark of the root and of the
leaves are sometimes employed domestically in the treatment of diarrhœa.
The bark has been used by tanners.
Distribution. Usually in moist sandy soil along the banks of ponds and
streams; southeastern Virginia and North Carolina, from the coast to the
valleys of the high Appalachian Mountains, southward to the valley of
the Caloosahatchie River, Florida, through the Gulf states to the shores
of Matagorda Bay, Texas, and through eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas, and
Missouri to southern Illinois, and the bluffs of White River, near
Shoals, Martin County, and near Elizabeth, Harrison County, Indiana;
common in the maritime Pinebelt of the south Atlantic and Gulf states,
and of its largest size near the coast of eastern Texas; in the interior
less abundant and usually of small size. Passing into
Vaccinium arboreum var. glaucescens Sarg.
_Batodendron glaucescens_ Greene
[Illustration: Fig. 717]
Differing in its glaucescent, pubescent or glabrous leaves, in its
usually larger leaf-like bracts of the inflorescence and often in its
globose-campanulate corolla.
A tree, 10°—20° high, with a short often crooked trunk, pubescent or
glabrous gray branchlets, and winter-buds and bark like those of
_Vaccinium arboreum_ with which it often grows.
Distribution. Tunnel Hill, Johnson County, Illinois, southern Missouri
to eastern Oklahoma (Sapulpa, Creek County) and through Arkansas to
western Louisiana (near Shreveport, Rapides Parish) and eastern Texas to
Milam County.
LIV. THEOPHRASTACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and entire coriaceous persistent
leaves. Flowers perfect, regular; calyx campanulate, with 5 sepals
imbricated in the bud; corolla 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud,
with 5 staminodia attached below the sinuses; stamens 5, attached to the
base of the corolla-tube, opposite the lobes; ovary 1-celled, with a
simple style and a slightly 5-lobed stigma; ovules peltate, numerous,
attached to a central fleshy placenta, amphitropous. Fruit baccate,
many-seeded. Seeds immersed in the thickened placenta filling the cavity
of the fruit; seed-coat membranaceous; embryo surrounded by thick
cartilaginous albumen.
A tropical American family of four genera with one species reaching the
shores of southern Florida.
1. JACQUINIA Jacq.
Trees or shrubs, with terete or slightly many-angled branchlets, without
a terminal bud, and fibrous roots. Leaves often punctate with pellucid
dark glands. Flowers on slender ebracteolate pedicels from the axils of
minute ovate acute persistent bracts, in terminal or axillary clusters;
calyx slightly ciliate on the margins, rounded at apex, persistent under
the fruit; corolla hypogynous, the lobes obtuse and spreading, furnished
with 5 petal-like ovate obtuse spreading staminodia; stamens inserted on
the corolla opposite its lobes near the base of the short tube;
filaments flattened, broad at base; anthers oblong or ovoid, attached on
the back above the base, extrorse, 2-celled, the cells opening
longitudinally; ovary ovoid. Fruit ovoid or subglobose, crowned by the
remnants of the persistent style, with a thin crustaceous outer coat,
inclosing the thick enlarged mucilaginous placenta. Seeds oblong;
seed-coat punctate; embryo eccentric; cotyledons ovate, shorter than the
elongated inferior radicle turned toward the broad ventral hilum.
Jacquinia with five or six species is confined to tropical America, with
one species reaching southern Florida.
The generic name is in honor of Nicholas Joseph Jacquin (1728—1818), the
distinguished Austrian botanist.
1. Jacquinia keyensis Metz. Joe Wood. Sea Myrtle.
[Illustration: Fig. 718]
Leaves subverticillate, alternate or sometimes opposite, crowded near
the end of the branches, cuneate-spatulate or oblong-obovate, rounded or
emarginate or often apiculate at apex, gradually narrowed below, entire,
with thickened slightly revolute margins, thick and coriaceous,
yellow-green, nearly veinless, with a very obscure midrib, covered on
the lower surface with pale dots, 1′—3′ long and ¼′—1′ wide; persistent
on the branches until the appearance of the new leaves the following
year; petioles short, stout, abruptly enlarged at base. Flowers
appearing in Florida from November until June, ⅓′ in diameter, pale
yellow, fragrant, on slender club-shaped pedicels ½′ long from the axils
of minute ovate coriaceous, reddish bracts slightly ciliate on the
margins, in terminal and axillary many-flowered glabrous racemes 2′—3′
long; sepals ovate-orbicular, obtuse; corolla salverform, ⅖′ broad, the
lobes longer than the tube; stamens shorter than the staminodia. Fruit
ripening in the autumn, ⅓′ in diameter, orange-red when fully ripe;
seeds light brown.
A tree, 12°—15° high, with a straight trunk 6′—7′ in diameter, stout
rigid spreading branches forming a compact regular round-topped head,
and slightly many-angled branchlets yellow-green or light orange-colored
and coated with short soft pale ferrugineous pubescence when they first
appear, terete, darker and sometimes reddish brown and marked in their
second year by orbicular depressed conspicuous leaf-scars and by many
scattered pale lenticels, becoming glabrous and red-brown or ashy gray
the following season. Winter-buds axillary, minute, nearly globose,
immersed in the bark. Bark of the trunk thin, smooth, blue-gray, and
usually more or less marked by pale or nearly white blotches. Wood
heavy, hard, very close-grained, rich brown, beautifully marked by
darker medullary rays.
Distribution. Florida, dry coral soil in the immediate neighborhood of
the shore, Gasparilla Island, on the west coast to the southern keys,
and to the borders of the Everglades; rare but most abundant and of its
largest size in Florida on the Marquesas Keys; on the Bahama Islands and
in Cuba and Jamaica.
LV. MYRSINACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, alternate entire coriaceous punctate
leaves, without stipules. Flowers regular, perfect or dimorphous; calyx
persistent under the fruit; corolla, without staminodia,
glandular-punctate; stamens inserted on the corolla, as many as and
opposite its lobes; ovary 1-celled, with an undivided style and a minute
terminal stigma; ovules peltate, immersed in the fleshy central
placenta, amphitropous. Fruit a drupe. Seed solitary, globose, with
copious cartilaginous or corneous albumen; seed-coat membranaceous.
A tropical family of thirty genera, with two arborescent species
reaching the shores of southern Florida.
CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES.
Flowers perfect in terminal panicles; anthers on short broad
filaments; style elongated.
1. Ardisia.
Flowers dimorphous in small axillary clusters; anthers sessile; stigma
sessile or in one form of the staminate flower terminal on a
slender style.
2. Rapanea.
1. ARDISIA Sw.
Glabrous trees or shrubs, with leaves punctate below with immersed
resinous dots. Flowers resinous-punctate, pedicellate, the pedicels
bibracteolate at base or ebracteolate, in terminal or rarely axillary
branched panicles, with minute scarious deciduous or caducous bracts and
bractlets; calyx free, 5 or rarely 4-lobed or parted, the divisions
contorted or imbricated in the bud; corolla 5 or rarely 4—6-parted, the
divisions extrorsely or sinistrorsely contorted in the bud, short or
elongated, white or rose color; stamens exserted; filaments short or
nearly obsolete, free, inserted on the throat of the corolla; anthers
usually sagittate-lanceolate, attached on the back just above the base,
introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally sometimes nearly to
the base; ovary globose; ovules numerous, immersed in the globose
resinous-punctate placenta. Fruit globose, with thin usually dry flesh
and a 1-seeded stone with a usually crustaceous or bony shell. Seed
concave or more or less lobed at base, resinous-punctate; hilum basilar,
concave, conspicuous; embryo cylindric, transverse; cotyledons flat on
the inner face, rounded on the back, shorter than the slender radicle.
Ardisia with about two hundred species inhabits tropical and subtropical
regions of the two hemispheres. The genus has few useful properties, but
a number of species are cultivated for the beauty of their handsome
evergreen foliage and bright-colored fruits.
The generic name is from ἀρδις, in reference to the pointed anthers.
1. Ardisia paniculata Nutt. Marlberry. Cherry.
_Icacorea paniculata_ Sudw.
[Illustration: Fig. 719]
Leaves ovate to oblong-lanceolate or lanceolate-obovate, acute or
rounded at the narrow apex, cuneate and gradually contracted at base,
entire, with thickened and slightly revolute margins, thick and
coriaceous, glabrous, marked by minute scattered dark dots, dark
yellow-green on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, 3′—6′ long
and 1′—1½′ wide, with a broad midrib yellow and conspicuous on the under
side, slender primary veins and reticulate veinlets; appearing in the
summer or early autumn and falling before the appearance of the flowers
the following year; petioles stout, grooved, ¼′—½′ in length. Flowers
fragrant, usually opening in November or occasionally as early as July,
¼′ in diameter, on slender elongated pedicels without bractlets, from
the axils of linear acute caducous bracts, in terminal rusty brown
puberulous panicles 3′—4′ long and broad, their lower branches often
from the axils of upper leaves; calyx ovoid, divided nearly to the base
into 5 ovate acute lobes scarious and ciliate on the margins and marked
on the back with dark lines; corolla 5-parted, with oblong rounded
divisions sinistrorsely overlapping, or with 1 lobe wholly outside and 1
inside in the bud, conspicuously marked with red spots on the inner
surface near the base, becoming reflexed; stamens, with short broad
filaments, contracted by a geniculate fold in the middle, and large
orange-colored anthers longer than the filaments, their cells opening
almost to the base; ovary globose, glandular, gradually contracted into
a long slender style ending in a simple stigma. Fruit ripening in early
spring, globose, ¼′ in diameter, tipped with the remnants of the style,
and roughened by resinous glands, dark brown at first when fully grown,
ultimately becoming black and lustrous; stone brown, thin-walled,
crustaceous; seed conspicuously lobed at base, bright red-brown, about
⅛′ in diameter.
A slender tree, in Florida rarely more than 20° high, with a short trunk
4′—5′ in diameter, numerous thin upright branches forming a narrow head,
and stout terete often contorted branchlets, rusty brown or dark
orange-colored and slightly puberulous when they first appear, becoming
in their second year dark brown or ashy gray, and marked by many minute
circular lenticels and by thin nearly orbicular flat leaf-scars
displaying in the centre a group of fibro-vascular bundle-scars.
Winter-buds rusty brown; terminal slender, acuminate, ⅛′—¼′ long;
axillary globose, minute, nearly immersed in the bark. Bark of the trunk
about ⅛′ thick, light gray or nearly white, roughened by minute
lenticels, and separating into large thin papery plates. Wood heavy,
hard, very close-grained, rich brown beautifully marked by darker
medullary rays, with thick lighter colored sapwood.
Distribution. Florida, from Mosquito Inlet to the southern keys on the
east coast, and from the shores of the Caloosahatchee River to Cape
Romano on the west coast; usually a shrub, occasionally arborescent on
the shores of Bay Biscayne and on some of the southern keys; on the
Bahama Islands, in Cuba, and southern Mexico.
2. RAPANEA Aubl.
Trees or shrubs, with watery juices and terete branchlets. Leaves
alternate, entire or rarely dentate, usually distinctly lepidote,
persistent, without stipules. Flowers perfect or unisexual by abortion,
minute, 4 or 5, or rarely 6 or 7-merous, sessile or pedicellate, in
small axillary sessile or pedunculate fascicles, their bracts deciduous;
calyx free, persistent, the sepals imbricate-valvate in the bud,
ciliate, usually glandular-punctate; corolla hypogynous, the lobes more
or less connate at base, ovate or elliptic, spreading or recurved,
glandular-punctate, papillate on the margins, imbricate or rarely
convolute in the bud; stamens inserted on the base of the corolla
opposite its lobes; filaments 0; anthers short, connate to the corolla,
acuminate and papillate at apex, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening
longitudinally; ovary globose or ellipsoidal, 1-celled; stigma capitate,
irregularly lobed; ovules few, peltate, immersed in one series near the
middle of the free fleshy globose placenta. Fruit dry or fleshy, seed
filling the cavity of the fruit, globose, intruded at base; testa thin;
albumen copious, corneous, rarely slightly ruminate; embryo cylindric,
elongated, transverse, usually curved; cotyledons small, radicle
elongated.
Rapanea, with nearly one hundred and fifty species, is widely
distributed through the tropical and subtropical regions of the two
hemispheres, one species reaching southern Florida.
The generic name is formed from the native name of _Rapanea guianensis_
in British Guiana.
1. Rapanea guianensis Aubl.
[Illustration: Fig. 720]
Leaves crowded at the end of the branches, oblong-obovate, obtuse or
retuse at apex, gradually narrowed and contracted at base, coriaceous,
bright green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower
surface, 2¾′—3½′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, with thickened revolute margins,
a thick midrib and obscure veins; petioles stout, narrowly
wing-margined, ¼′—⅓′ in length. Flowers in November, minute,
short-pedicellate in short pedunculate clusters usually 5, rarely
4-merous, white more or less marked with purple, about ⅙′ in diameter;
calyx divided to the middle, the lobes broad-ovate, acute or rounded at
apex, slightly ciliate, persistent under the fruit; corolla 2 or 3 times
longer than the calyx, the lobes spreading, narrowed and rounded at
apex, slightly ciliate on the margins; staminate flowers dimorphous;
anthers sagittate-apiculate, inserted below the middle of the petals;
ovary in one form crowned by a minute discoid sessile stigma and
probably abortive, in the other form gradually narrowed into a slender
style, terminating in an oblique stigma and fertile; pistillate flowers,
anthers smaller and rudimentary; ovary crowned by a large nearly sessile
irregularly lobed papillate stigma deciduous from the fruit. Fruit in
clusters crowded on the elongated somewhat thickened spur-like peduncle
of the flower-cluster covered with imbricated persistent bracts, dark
blue or nearly black, tipped with the persistent style, ⅙′—⅕′ in
diameter; exocarp thin and fleshy; endocarp crustaceous, white.
A tree, in Florida occasionally 18°—20° high, with a tall usually more
or less crooked trunk 2′—3′ in diameter, small ascending branches
forming an open irregular head, and slender gray or light red-brown
branchlets roughened for a year or two by the persistent spur-like
peduncles of the fallen fruit and later marked by circular scars in the
axils of the small transverse leaf-scars; more often a shrub. Bark of
the trunk thin, close, pale gray.
Distribution. Florida, shores of Indian River on the east coast and
Palmetto, Manatee County, on the west coast, southward to the southern
keys; common; on the Bahama Islands, Cuba, Porto Rico, Jamaica and
Trinidad, to southern Brazil, and to Mexico and Bolivia.
LVI. SAPOTACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with milky juice. Leaves alternate, simple, entire,
pinnately veined, mostly coriaceous, petiolate, without stipules.
Flowers perfect, regular, small, in axillary clusters; calyx of 5-8
sepals imbricated in the bud, persistent under the fruit; corolla
hypogynous, 5—8-cleft, the divisions imbricated in the bud, often with
as many or twice as many internal appendages borne on its throat; disk
0; fertile stamens as many as and opposite the divisions of the corolla
and inserted on its short tube, often with sterile filaments
(_staminodia_) alternate with them; anthers generally extrorse,
2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; pistil of united carpels;
ovary sessile, usually 5-celled; style simple; ovules solitary in each
cell, attached to an axile placenta, ascending, anatropous; raphe
ventral; micropyle inferior. Fruit baccate, bearing at apex the remnant
of the style, usually 1-celled and 1-seeded. Seed with or without
albumen; embryo large; radicle terete, inferior.
This family with fifty genera is chiefly tropical and subtropical, with
only Bumelia extending in North America into temperate regions. Some of
the species produce valuable timber or edible and agreeable fruits. From
_Palaquium gutta_ Burkh., of the Malay Peninsula, gutta-percha is
obtained. Five genera are represented by trees in the flora of the
United States.
CONSPECTUS OF THE GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES.
Calyx of 5 sepals in a single series.
Staminodia 1 in each sinus of the corolla.
Appendages of the corolla 0; staminodia slender, scale-like.
1. Sideroxylum.
Appendages of the corolla present; staminodia petaloid.
Staminodia linear, fimbriate; seeds, with copious albumen.
2. Dipholis.
Staminodia petaloid, entire or denticulate; seeds, without
albumen.
3. Bumelia.
Staminodia and appendages of the corolla 0; leaves covered below
with lustrous copper-colored or golden pubescence.
4. Chrysophyllum.
Calyx of 6—8 sepals in 2 series; corolla 6—8-lobed, with 2 appendages
in each sinus inside of a scale-like or petaloid staminodia.
5. Mimusops.
1. SIDEROXYLUM L.
Trees, with terete branchlets, naked buds, and long-petiolate persistent
leaves, the veins remote and connected by reticulate veinlets. Flowers
minute, on ebracteolate pedicels from the axils of minute deciduous
bracts, in crowded many-flowered axillary fascicles; calyx 5-parted, the
divisions in one series, nearly equal, corolla furnished with 5 or 6
staminodia, and 5 or rarely 6-lobed; filaments slender, elongated, bent
outward at the apex; anthers oblong, the cells at first extrorse,
sometimes becoming sublateral; staminodia linear, scale-like; ovary
contracted into a subulate style tipped with a minute slightly 5-lobed
stigma. Fruit dry, 1-seeded, oblong, with thin coriaceous flesh. Seed
obovoid or oblong; seed-coat lustrous, light brown, folded on the inner
face into 2 obscure lobes rounded at apex; hilum elevated, subbasilar or
lateral, oblong or linear; embryo erect in thick fleshy albumen; radicle
much shorter than the oblong fleshy cotyledons.
Sideroxylum with a hundred species is widely distributed through the
tropics of the two hemispheres, and occurs also with a few species in
Australia, Madeira, southern Africa, New Zealand, and Norfolk Island, a
single species reaching the shores of southern Florida. Some of the
species are large and valuable timber-trees, producing hard handsome
durable wood.
The generic name, from σίδηρος and ξύλον, is in reference to the
hardness of the wood.
1. Sideroxylum fœtidissimum Jacq. Mastic.
_Sideroxylum Mastichodendron_ Jacq.
[Illustration: Fig. 721]
Leaves mostly clustered near the end of the branches, appearing
irregularly from early spring until autumn, oval, acute or rounded and
slightly emarginate at apex, and gradually narrowed at base, with
thickened cartilaginous slightly involute margins, silky-canescent
beneath when they unfold, and at maturity thin and firm, glabrous,
bright green and lustrous above, lustrous and yellow-green below, 3′—5′
long and 1½′—2′ wide, with a broad pale conspicuous midrib deeply
impressed on the upper side and inconspicuous primary veins arcuate near
the margins; petioles slender, 1′—1½′ in length. Flowers usually
appearing in Florida in the autumn and also in early spring and during
the summer on stout orange-colored puberulous pedicels from the axils of
minute acute scarious bracts usually deciduous before the opening of the
flower-buds, from the axils of young leaves or on the branches of the
previous year from leafless nodes; calyx yellow-green, puberulous on the
outer surface and deeply divided into broad-ovate rounded lobes rather
shorter than the oblong-ovate rounded divisions of the light yellow
corolla; staminodia lanceolate, nearly entire, tipped with a subulate
point and much shorter than the stamens; ovary oblong-ovoid, glabrous,
gradually contracted into an elongated style stigmatic at apex. Fruit
ripening in March and April on a much thickened woody stem erect or
nearly at right angles to the branch, 1′ long, separating from the calyx
in falling, with tough yellow skin, and thick juicy flesh of a pleasant
subacid flavor; seed obovoid, rounded above, narrowed at base, ½′ long
and ⅓′ wide.
A tree, in Florida 60°—70° high, with a massive straight trunk 3°—4° in
diameter, stout upright branches forming a dense irregular head, and
thick terete branchlets orange-colored and slightly puberulous when they
first appear, becoming glabrous, brown more or less tinged with red, and
marked by the conspicuous nearly orbicular leaf-scars displaying 3 large
fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and conspicuously roughened by the
thickened persistent bases of the fruit stalks. Bark of the trunk ⅓′—½′
thick, dark gray to light brown tinged with red and broken into thick
plate-like scales separating into thin layers. Wood heavy, hard, strong,
bright orange-colored, with thick yellow sapwood of 40—50 layers of
annual growth; in Florida used in boat-building.
Distribution. Florida, Cape Canaveral and Cape Romano to the southern
keys; on the Bahama Islands and many of the Antilles.
2. DIPHOLIS A. DC.
Trees or shrubs, with naked buds, and persistent leaves, the slender
veins arcuate and united near the margins. Flowers minute, on clavate
ebracteolate pedicels from the axils of minute deciduous bracts, in the
axils of existing leaves or from the leafless nodes of previous years;
calyx ovoid, deeply 5-lobed, the lobes nearly equal, ovate, rounded at
apex; corolla campanulate, white, 5-lobed, the spreading lobes furnished
on each side at the base with a linear or subulate appendage; stamens
exserted; filaments filiform; anthers oblong-sagittate, extrorse;
staminodia 5, petaloid, ovate, acute, fimbriately cut on the margins,
oblique, keeled on the back, inserted in the same rank and alternate
with the stamens; ovary oblong or narrow-ovoid, gradually contracted
into a slender style shorter than the corolla and stigmatic at the
apiculate apex. Fruit oblong-ovoid, with thin dry flesh. Seed ovoid;
seed-coat thick, coriaceous and lustrous; hilum oblong, basilar or
slightly lateral; embryo erect in thick fleshy albumen; cotyledons
ovate, flat, much longer than the short radicle turned toward the hilum.
Dipholis with three species is confined to the West Indies and southern
Florida.
The generic name, from δίς and φολίς, relates to the appendages of the
corolla.
1. Dipholis salicifolia A. DC. Bustic. Cassada.
[Illustration: Fig. 722]
Leaves oblong-lanceolate or narrow-obovate, acute, acuminate, or rounded
at apex, gradually contracted at base, with slightly thickened
cartilaginous wavy margins, thickly coated when they unfold with
lustrous rufous pubescence, and at maturity thin and firm, dark green
and lustrous above, pale yellow-green below, 3′—5′ long, ½′—1½′ wide,
and glabrous, or slightly puberulous on the lower side of the narrow
pale midrib, with inconspicuous veins and reticulate veinlets; appearing
in Florida in the spring and remaining on the branches between one and
two years; petioles slender, ½′—1′ in length. Flowers opening during
March and April, ⅛′ long, on thick pedicels ¼′ in length from the axils
of minute ovate acute scarious bracts, and coated with rufous
pubescence, in dense many-flowered fascicles crowded on branchlets of
the year or of the previous year for a distance of 8′—12′; calyx half
the length of the corolla, coated on the outer surface with rusty silky
pubescence; appendages of the corolla as long as the oval acute
irregularly toothed staminodia; ovary narrow-ovoid, glabrous, gradually
contracted into a slender style shorter than the corolla and stigmatic
at apex. Fruit solitary or rarely clustered, ripening in the autumn,
short-oblong to subglobose, black, ¼′ in length; seed pale brown, about
3/16′ in length.
A tree, in Florida sometimes 40°—50° high, with a straight trunk 18′—20′
in diameter, small upright branches forming a narrow graceful head, and
slender branchlets coated with rufous pubescence when they first appear,
becoming ashy gray or light brown tinged with red and marked by numerous
circular pale lenticels and by small elevated orbicular leaf-scars
displaying near the centre a compact cluster of fibro-vascular
bundle-scars. Bark of the trunk about ⅓′ thick and broken into thick
square plate-like brown scales tinged with red. Wood very heavy,
exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, dark brown or red, with thin
sapwood of 4 or 5 layers of annual growth.
Distribution. Florida, rich hummock soil, shores of Bay Biscayne and on
the Everglade Keys, Dade County, and on several of the southern keys; on
the Bahama Islands and on many of the Antilles.
3. BUMELIA Sw.
Small trees or shrubs, with terete usually spinescent branchlets, scaly
buds, and fibrous roots. Leaves often fascicled on spur-like lateral
branchlets, conduplicate in the bud, coriaceous or thin,
short-petiolate, obovate and obtuse or elliptic, silky-pubescent or
tomentose below, or nearly glabrous, with rather inconspicuous veins
arcuate near the entire margins and conspicuous reticulate veinlets,
deciduous or persistent. Flowers minute, on slender clavate ebracteolate
pedicels from the axils of lanceolate acute scarious deciduous bracts,
in many-flowered crowded fascicles in the axils of existing leaves or
from the leafless nodes of previous years; calyx ovoid to
subcampanulate, 5-lobed, the lobes in one series, imbricated in the bud,
ovate or oblong, rounded at apex, nearly equal; corolla campanulate,
white, with 5 spreading broad-ovate lobes rounded at apex and furnished
on each side at base with a minute acute ovate or lanceolate appendage;
stamens 5; filaments filiform; anthers ovoid-sagittate, attached on the
back below the middle, the cells opening by subextrorse slits;
staminodia petal-like, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, entire or obscurely
denticulate, flattened or keeled on the back, sometimes furnished at
base with a pair of minute scales; ovary hirsute, ovoid to ovoid-conic,
gradually or abruptly contracted into a slender short or elongated
simple style stigmatic at the acute apex. Fruit oblong-obovoid or
globose, black, solitary or in 2 or 3-fruited clusters; flesh thin and
dry or succulent. Seed ovoid or oblong, apiculate or rounded at apex,
without albumen; seed-coat thick, crustaceous, light brown, smooth and
shining, folded more or less conspicuously on the back into 2 lobes
rounded at apex; embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons thick
and fleshy, hemispheric, usually consolidated; radicle short, turned
toward the basilar or subbasilar orbicular or elliptic hilum.
Bumelia, with about twenty-five species is confined to the New World,
where it is distributed from the southern United States through the West
Indies to Mexico, Central America, and Brazil. Of the twelve species in
the United States which have been distinguished five are small trees.
Bumelia produces hard heavy strong wood, that of the North American
species containing bands of numerous large open ducts defining the
layers of annual growth and connected by conspicuous branched groups of
similar ducts, presenting in cross-section a reticulate appearance.
The generic name is from βουµελία, a classical name of the Ash-tree.
CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT SPECIES OF THE UNITED STATES.
Lower surface of the leaves pubescent or lanuginose.
Leaves short-obovate to oblanceolate or elliptic, covered below with
pale or ferrugineous silky pubescence.
1. B. tenax (C).
Leaves oblong-obovate, lanuginose below with ferrugineous or silvery
white hairs.
2. B. lanuginosa (A, C, H).
Leaves glabrous or nearly so.
Leaves deciduous.
Leaves oblong-obovate, thick.
3. B. monticola.
Leaves elliptic to oblanceolate, usually acute or acuminate, thin.
4. B. lycioides (A, C).
Leaves persistent, obovate; fruit oblong.
5. B. angustifolia (C, D).
1. Bumelia tenax Willd. Ironwood. Black Haw.
[Illustration: Fig. 723]
Leaves oblong-obovate to oblanceolate or elliptic, rarely oval or ovate
on leading shoots, rounded or acute at apex, cuneate at base, thin, dark
dull green, and finally reticulate-venulose on the upper surface,
thickly covered below with soft silky pale or gold-colored pubescence,
usually becoming dark rusty brown by midsummer, 1′—3′ long and 1⅛′—1½′
wide, with slightly thickened and revolute margins and a prominent
midrib; turning yellow and falling irregularly during the winter;
petioles slender, hairy, grooved, ¼′—1′ in length. Flowers appearing
from May in Florida to July in South Carolina, ⅛′ long, on pedicels
½′—1′ in length and coated like the calyx with rufous silky pubescence,
in many-flowered crowded fascicles; calyx ovoid, with oblong lobes;
appendages of the corolla large, ovate, acute, crenate, shorter than the
ovate staminodia about as long as the lobes of the corolla; ovary
narrow-ovoid, gradually contracted into an elongated style. Fruit
ripening and falling in the autumn, short-oblong to ellipsoid, ⅓′—½′ in
length; flesh sweet and edible; seed oblong, short-pointed at apex,
¼′—⅓′ long.
A tree, 20°—30° high, with a trunk occasionally 5′—6′ in diameter,
straight spreading flexible tough branches unarmed or armed with
straight stout rigid spines sometimes 1′ in length, and slender
branchlets coated when they first appear with silky pale pubescence
often tinged with red and soon rusty brown, becoming glabrous before
winter, and then dark red and slightly roughened by occasional minute
dark lenticels; or often a shrub only a few feet high. Winter-buds
minute, subglobose, with imbricated ovate scales rounded at apex and
clothed with rusty brown tomentum. Bark of the trunk thick, brown tinged
with red, and divided irregularly by deep fissures into narrow flat
reticulate ridges covered with minute appressed scales. Wood heavy,
hard, close-grained, light brown streaked with white, with lighter
colored sapwood.
Distribution. Dry sandy soil; South Carolina (Saint Helena Island and
Bluffton, Beaufort County), southward in the coast region of Georgia and
east Florida to Cape Canaveral and through the interior of the
peninsular to Cedar Keys on the west coast; near Bainbridge, Decatur
County, southwestern Georgia.
2. Bumelia lanuginosa Pers. Gum Elastic. Chittam Wood.
[Illustration: Fig. 724]
Leaves oblong-obovate, rounded and often apiculate at apex and gradually
narrowed at base, coated when they unfold with pale ferrugineous
tomentum dense on the lower and loose on the upper surface, and at
maturity thin and firm, dark green and lustrous above, more or less
lanuginose below with rusty brown or silvery white (var. _albicans_
Sarg.) hairs, 1′—2½′ long and ⅓′—¾′ wide; falling irregularly during the
winter; petioles slender, rusty brown or pale pubescent, ⅛′—¾′ in
length. Flowers opening in summer on hairy pedicels ⅛′ in length, in
16—18-flowered fascicles; calyx ovoid, with ovate rounded lobes coated
on the outer surface with ferrugineous or pale tomentum and rather
shorter than the tube of the corolla; appendages of the corolla small,
ovate and acute; staminodia ovate, acute, remotely and slightly
denticulate, as long as the corolla-lobes; ovary abruptly contracted
into a slender elongated style. Fruit on a slender drooping stalk
ripening and falling in the autumn, oblong or slightly obovoid, ½′ long,
with thick flesh; seed short-oblong, rounded at apex, about ¼′ in
length.
A tree, often 40°—50° high, with a tall straight trunk 1°—2° in
diameter, short thick rigid branches forming a narrow-oblong
round-topped head, unarmed, or armed with stout rigid straight or
slightly curved spines frequently developing into spinescent leafy
lateral branchlets, and slender often somewhat zigzag branchlets coated
with thick rufous or pale tomentum when they first appear, becoming in
their first winter red-brown to ashy gray and glabrous or nearly so, and
marked by occasional minute lenticels and by small semiorbicular
leaf-scars displaying 2 clusters of fibro-vascular bundle-scars; of its
largest size in the Texas coast region; much smaller east of the
Mississippi River, and there rarely more than 20° tall. Winter-buds
obtuse, ⅛′ long, covered with broad-obovate rusty-tomentose scales. Bark
of the trunk ½′ thick, dark gray-brown and usually divided into narrow
ridges broken into thick appressed scales. Wood heavy, rather soft, not
strong, close-grained, light brown or yellow, with thick lighter colored
sapwood; producing in Texas considerable quantities of clear viscid gum
from the freshly cut wood.
Distribution. Southern and southeastern Georgia, western Florida
southward to the neighborhood of Lake City, Columbia County and to Cedar
Key, coast of Alabama and inland to Dallas County, southern Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Texas to the valley of the San Antonio River and over the
Edwards Plateau (Kendall, Kerr and Brown Counties) to the valley of the
upper Brazos River (Palo Pinto County), and northward through western
Louisiana and western Arkansas to western Oklahoma (Seiling, Dewey
County), and to southeastern Kansas (Cherokee County) and southern
Missouri as far north as the valley of the Meramec River (near Allenton,
St. Louis County), and southern Illinois (near Mound City, Pulaski
County); at Calcasieu Pass, on the sandy beaches of the Louisiana coast
forming thickets of plants 6°—8° high, and uninjured by salt spray; the
var. _albicans_ in eastern Texas from the valley of the lower Brazos to
that of the San Antonio River and in the neighborhood of Monterey, Nuevo
Leon; most distinct and of its largest size on the bottoms of the
Guadalupe River, near Victoria, Victoria County, and here occasionally
70°—80° high, with a trunk 3° in diameter.
Passing into the var. _rigida_ A. Gray, with smaller rather narrower
leaves and often more spinescent branches. Brown and Uvalde Counties,
Texas; in Coahua and Nuevo Leon, and in the cañons of the mountains of
southern Arizona up to altitudes of at least 4000°—5000°; in Texas
shrubby in habit; in Arizona forming dense thickets of slender stems
often 20°—25° tall and only 2′—3′ in diameter.
3. Bumelia monticola Buckl.
[Illustration: Fig. 725]
Leaves oblong-obovate, narrowed and acute or rounded and rarely slightly
emarginate at apex, cuneate at base, entire, covered above with matted
pale hairs and densely below with snow white pubescence when they
unfold, and at maturity coriaceous, dark yellow-green, lustrous and
glabrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 1¼′—3′ long
and ⅓′—1¼′ wide, with slightly revolute margins, a slender yellow midrib
glabrous or slightly pubescent below toward the base and conspicuous
reticulate veinlets, deciduous; petioles slender pubescent early in the
season, becoming glabrous. Flowers opening from the middle of June to
the middle of July, on villose pedicels, becoming sometimes nearly
glabrous in the autumn, ⅛′—¼′ in length; calyx pale green,
villose-pubescent, its lobes ovate, ciliate on the margins, shorter than
the lobes of the corolla, their appendages lanceolate; staminodia
rounded at apex, longer than the corolla-lobes. Fruit ripening in
September, subglobose to oblong-obovoid, ¼′—⅓′ long and ¼′—⅓′ in
diameter; seed oblong, rounded at the ends, about ⅖′ long.
A tree, in favorable positions 20°—25° high, with spinose branches
forming an irregular open head, and slender often zigzag red-brown
lustrous branchlets, the lateral branchlets often ending in stout
spines; more often an irregularly branched shrub 10°—15° high, spreading
on the banks of streams into great thickets. Bark of the trunk thick,
pale and dark gray, rough and scaly, exfoliating in large scales.
Distribution. Texas, dry limestone cliffs and cañon bottoms and by
streams dry during a large part of the year, valley of the upper
Guadalupe River (Comal, Kendall and Kerr Counties) to the valley of the
Rio Grande (Uvalde County), and northward to the valley of the upper
Brazos River (Palo Pinto County); in Cohahuila (near Saltillo).
4. Bumelia lycioides Gærtn. f. Ironwood. Buckthorn.
[Illustration: Fig. 726]
Leaves elliptic to oblanceolate, acute, acuminate, or rarely rounded at
apex, gradually narrowed at base, covered when they unfold especially
below with silky villose pubescence, soon glabrous, and at maturity
bright green and glabrous on the upper surface, light green and
sometimes coated on the lower surface with pale pubescence, thin and
rather firm, finely reticulate-venulose, 3′—6′ long and ½′—2′ wide, with
a pale thin conspicuous midrib sometimes slightly pubescent below near
the base, deciduous in the autumn; petioles slender, slightly grooved,
mostly pubescent early in the season, usually becoming glabrous, ½′—1′
in length. Flowers appearing at midsummer on slender glabrous pedicels
½′ long, in crowded many-flowered fascicles; calyx glabrous,
ovoid-campanulate, with rounded lobes rather shorter than the corolla;
staminodia broad-ovate, denticulate, nearly as long as the narrow
appendages; ovary ovoid, slightly hairy toward the base only, gradually
contracted into a short thick style. Fruit ripening and falling in the
autumn, ovoid or obovoid, about ⅔′ in length; flesh thick; seed
short-oblong to subglobose, rounded at apex, nearly ¼′ long, with a pale
conspicuous hilum.
A tree, 25°—30° high, with a short trunk rarely more than 6′ in
diameter, stout flexible branches usually unarmed or furnished with
short stout slightly curved spines occasionally developing into leafy
spinescent branches, and short thick spur-like lateral branchlets
slightly puberulous when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous,
light red-brown, rather lustrous, and marked by numerous pale lenticels,
and in their second year dark or light brown tinged with red or ashy
gray. Winter-buds minute, obtuse, nearly immersed in the bark, with pale
dark brown glabrous scales. Bark of the trunk thin, light red-brown, the
generally smooth surface broken into small thin persistent scales. Wood
heavy, hard, not strong, close-grained, light brown or yellow, with
thick lighter colored sapwood.
Distribution. Usually in low moist soil on the borders of swamps and
streams; rocky bluffs of the Ohio River near Cannelton, Perry County,
southern Indiana, southern Illinois (Hardin, Pope and Pulaski Counties),
to southeastern Missouri (Butler County) and to western Kentucky,
western and central Tennessee, central Mississippi and northern
Louisiana (West Feliciana Parish); and through western Arkansas to the
coast region of eastern Texas (Beaumont, Jefferson County, and Columbia,
Brazoria County); central Alabama; Florida southward to St. Mark’s,
Wakulla County, and to Taylor, Alachua and Volusia Counties, and to
northwestern Georgia (Catoosa County), and the valley of the Savannah
River in Georgia and South Carolina, and northward through eastern North
Carolina to southeastern Virginia (Norfolk County).
5. Bumelia angustifolia Nutt. Ants’ Wood. Downward Plum.
[Illustration: Fig. 727]
Leaves obovate, rounded at apex, and gradually narrowed and cuneate at
base, with slightly thickened revolute margins, glabrous, thick and
coriaceous, pale blue-green on the upper surface, paler on the lower
surface, 1′—1½′ long and ¼′—1¼′ wide, with a pale slender midrib, and
very obscure veins and veinlets; usually persistent on the branches
until the end of their second winter; petioles stout, grooved, rarely ¼′
in length. Flowers generally appearing in October and November, on
slender glabrous pedicels seldom more than ½′ in length, in few or
many-flowered crowded fascicles; calyx glabrous, divided nearly to the
base into narrow-ovate lobes rounded at apex and half as long as the
divisions of the corolla furnished with linear-lanceolate appendages as
long as the ovate acute denticulate staminodia; ovary narrow-ovoid,
slightly hairy at base only, gradually contracted into an elongated
style. Fruit ripening in the spring, on slender drooping stems, usually
1 fruit only being developed from a fascicle of flowers, oblong or
slightly obovoid, rounded at the ends, ½′—¾′ long and ¼′ in diameter,
with thick sweet flesh; seed oblong, rounded at apex, ½′ long.
A tree, sometimes 20° high, with a short trunk rarely exceeding 6′—8′ in
diameter, graceful pendulous branches forming a compact round head, and
rigid spinescent divergent lateral branchlets often armed with acute
slender spines sometimes 1′ in length, and when they first appear
thickly coated with loose pale or dark brown deciduous tomentum,
becoming light brown tinged with red or ashy gray. Winter-buds ovoid,
acute, and covered with rufous tomentum. Bark of the trunk ⅓′—½′ thick,
gray tinged with red, and deeply divided by longitudinal and cross
fissures into oblong or nearly square plates. Wood heavy, hard, although
not strong, very close-grained, light brown or orange-colored, with
thick lighter colored sapwood.
Distribution. Florida, shores of Indian River to the southern keys, and
on the west coast from Cedar Keys to East Cape, and here less abundant
and usually on rocky shores and in the interior of low barren islands;
on the Bahama Islands and in Cuba.
4. CHRYSOPHYLLUM L.
Trees, with terete branchlets usually coated while young with dense
tomentum, and naked buds. Leaves short-petiolate, bright green and
glabrous on the upper surface and coated on the lower surface with
brilliant silky pubescence or tomentum, persistent. Flowers on pedicels
from the axils of minute acute bracts, in dense many-flowered fascicles;
calyx usually 5-parted, the divisions nearly equal, obtuse; corolla 5 or
rarely 6 or 7-lobed, tubular, campanulate or subrotate, white or
greenish white; filaments short, subulate or filiform, enlarged into
broad connectives; anthers ovoid or triangular, extrorse or rarely
partly introrse, the cells spreading below; ovary usually 5-celled,
style crowned by a 5-lobed stigma. Fruit short-oblong, ovoid or globose.
Seed ovoid; seed-coat coriaceous, dull or lustrous; hilum subbasilar,
elongated, conspicuous; embryo erect, surrounded by more or less pungent
fleshy albumen; cotyledons oblong, foliaceous.
Chrysophyllum is tropical, with fifty or sixty species most abundant in
the New World, with a small number of species in western and southern
tropical Africa, southern Asia, Australia, and the Hawaiian Islands, and
with one species in southern Florida. The most valuable species,
_Chrysophyllum Cainito_ L., a native of the West Indies and now
cultivated in all tropical countries and naturalized in many parts of
Central and South America, produces the so-called star-apple, a
succulent edible blue or purple and green fruit the size and shape of a
small apple.
The generic name, from χρυσός and φύλλον, is in allusion to the golden
covering of the under surface of the leaves.
1. Chrysophyllum oliviforme Lam. Satin-leaf.
[Illustration: Fig. 728]
Leaves revolute in the bud, oval, acute or contracted into a short broad
point or sometimes rounded at apex, abruptly cuneate at base, thick and
coriaceous, bright blue-green on the upper surface and covered on the
lower surface and on the petiole with brilliant copper-colored
pubescence, 2′—3′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, with a broad prominent midrib
deeply impressed on the upper side and numerous straight veins arcuate
hear the margins; petioles stout, ½′—⅔′ in length. Flowers appearing in
Florida irregularly throughout the year and often found on a branch with
ripe or half-grown fruits, on stout pedicels shorter than the petioles,
covered like the calyx with rufous tomentum, in few or many-flowered
fascicles in the axils of leaves or at the base of lateral branchlets in
those of earlier years; calyx divided nearly to the base into broad
rounded lobes rather shorter than the tube of the subrotate white
corolla with short spreading rounded lobes; ovary 5-celled, pubescent,
gradually contracted into a short style crowned by a broad 5-lobed
stigma. Fruit usually 1-seeded by abortion, on stems 1′ long, usually
only a single fruit being produced from a flower-cluster, ovoid or
sometimes nearly globose, dark purple, roughened by occasional
excrescences, with a thick tough skin inclosing the juicy sweet mawkish
flesh light purple on the exterior, lighter toward the interior, and
quite white in the centre; seed narrowed at the ends, ½′ long, covered
with a thin light brown coat closely invested with a white glutinous
aril-like pulpy mass.
A tree, 25°—30° high, with a tall straight trunk sometimes a foot in
diameter, upright branches forming a compact oblong head, and slender
slightly zigzag branchlets coated when they first appear with
ferrugineous tomentum, becoming in their second year light red-brown or
ashy gray and covered with small pale elevated circular lenticels; in
sandy soil under the shade of Pine-trees in the Everglade Keys a shrub
6° high or less. Bark of the trunk ¼′ thick, light brown slightly tinged
with red, and broken by shallow fissures into large irregularly shaped
plates separating on the surface into small thin scales. Wood very
heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, light brown shaded with red, with
thin lighter colored sapwood.
Distribution. Florida, rich hummocks, from Mosquito Inlet on the east
coast to the Everglade Keys, Dade County and to the southern keys, and
on the west coast from the shores of the Caloosahatchie River to the
neighborhood of Cape Sable; local and nowhere common; on the Bahama
Islands, and in Cuba, Porto Rico and Jamaica.
5. MIMUSOPS L.
Trees or rarely shrubs, with stout terete branchlets, small naked buds,
and sweet juice. Leaves usually clustered at the end of the branches,
with slender inconspicuous transverse veins and minute reticulate
veinlets, persistent. Flowers on clavate pedicels from the axils of
minute deciduous bracts; calyx 6—8-parted, the divisions in 2 series,
those of the exterior series almost valvate in the bud; corolla white,
barely longer than the calyx, subrotate, usually dilated at the throat,
6—8-lobed, the lobes furnished at base with a pair of petal-like
appendages; stamens as many as the lobes of the corolla; filaments
short, dilated; anthers lanceolate, their connectives excurrent, acute,
or sometimes aristate at apex; staminodia as many as the lobes of the
corolla, scale-like or petaloid, entire, 2-lobed or laciniate; ovary
ovoid, hirsute or puberulous, gradually narrowed into a slender style
stigmatic at apex. Fruit globose, 1 or 2-seeded, tipped with the much
thickened elongated style; skin crustaceous, indurate; flesh thick and
dry. Seed oblong-ovoid, slightly compressed; seed-coat crustaceous,
chestnut-brown and lustrous; hilum elongated, lateral or minute,
basilar; embryo surrounded by thick fleshy albumen; cotyledons flat,
thick and fleshy, much longer than the short erect radicle.
Mimusops with thirty or forty species is widely distributed through the
tropics of the two hemispheres, a single species reaching the shores of
southern Florida. Several species produce hard heavy timber, edible
fruits, or valuable milky juices.
The significance of the generic name, from µιµώ and ὄψις in allusion to
the shape of the corolla, is not apparent.
1. Mimusops emarginata Britt. Wild Dilly.
_Mimusops Sieberi_ Chap., not A. DC.
[Illustration: Fig. 729]
Leaves clustered at the end of the branches, involute in the bud
oblong-elliptic, or occasionally slightly obovate, rounded or retuse at
apex, rounded or cuneate at base, with slightly thickened revolute
margins, bright red when they unfold, and slightly puberulous on the
under surface of the midrib, and at maturity thick and coriaceous,
bright green and lustrous, covered on the upper surface with a slight
glaucous bloom, conspicuously reticulate-venulose, 3′—4′ long and 1′—1½′
wide, with a stout midrib glabrous, or puberulous with rusty hairs
below, and deeply impressed above; appearing in Florida in April and May
and deciduous during their second year; petioles slender, grooved,
rusty-pubescent, especially while young, ½′—1′ in length. Flowers
opening in the spring on slender pedicels near the end of the branches,
coated with rusty tomentum and 1′ or more long, from the axils of leaves
of the year or from those of fallen leaves of the previous year; calyx
narrow-ovoid, divided nearly to the base into 6 lobes, those of the
outer row lanceolate, acute, covered on the outer surface with rusty
brown tomentum and on the inner surface with pale pubescence, thickened
and usually marked at the base on the outer surface by black spots,
those of the inner row ovate, acute, keeled toward the base, light
greenish yellow and pale-pubescent; corolla light yellow tinged with
green, ⅔′ in diameter, with 6 spreading lanceolate acute divisions
entire or erosely toothed toward the apex, their appendage slender,
acute and from one half to two thirds their length; staminodia minute,
nearly triangular, entire; ovary narrow-ovoid, dark red, puberulous
toward the base with pale hairs, and gradually narrowed into an
elongated exserted style stigmatic at apex. Fruit ripening at the end of
a year, in the spring or in early autumn, on a stout erect stem about 1′
long, and persistent until after the tree flowers the following year,
subglobose to slightly obovoid, flattened and compressed at apex, 1′—1½′
in diameter, usually 1-seeded by abortion, with a thick dry outer coat
roughened by minute rusty brown scales, and thick spongy flesh filled
with milky juice; seed ½′ long, with an elongated lateral hilum.
A tree, in Florida rarely more than 30° high, with a short gnarled trunk
12′—15′ in diameter and usually hollow and defective, thick branches
forming a compact round head, and stout branchlets clustered at the end
of the branches of the previous year, coated when they first appear with
dark rufous pubescence, becoming glabrous and light orange-brown at the
end of a few weeks, and in their second year covered with thick ashy
gray or light red-brown scaly bark and marked by elevated obcordate
leaf-scars displaying 3 large dark conspicuous fibro-vascular
bundle-scars. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, rusty-tomentose. Bark of the
trunk about ¼′ thick and irregularly divided by deep fissures into
ridges rounded on the back and broken into small nearly square plates.
Wood very heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, rich very dark brown, with
light-colored sapwood.
Distribution. Florida, only on the southern keys; not common; on the
Bahama Islands and in Cuba.
LVII. EBENACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and alternate simple entire leaves,
without stipules. Flowers diœcious or polygamous, regular, axillary,
articulate with the bibracteolate pedicels; calyx persistent; corolla
hypogynous, regular; disk 0; stamens more numerous than the lobes of the
corolla, inserted on its base, fewer and rudimentary or 0 in the
pistillate flower; filaments short; anthers introrse, 2-celled; ovary
several-celled; ovules 2 in each cell, suspended from its apex,
anatropous; raphe dorsal; micropyle superior. Fruit a 1 or
several-seeded berry. Seeds with copious albumen; embryo axile.
The Ebony family with seven genera and a large number of species is
widely distributed in tropical and temperate regions, with two
representatives of its most important genus, Diospyros, in the flora of
the United States.
1. DIOSPYROS L.
Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, without a terminal bud, scaly
axillary buds, coriaceous leaves revolute in the bud, and fibrous roots.
Flowers mostly diœcious, from the axils of leaves of the year or of the
previous year; staminate smaller than the pistillate and usually in
short few-flowered bracted cymes; pistillate generally solitary; calyx
4-lobed, the lobes valvate in the bud, accrescent under the fruit;
corolla 4-lobed, the lobes sinistrorsely contorted in the bud, more or
less contracted in the throat, the lobes spreading or recurved; stamens
usually 16, inserted on the bottom of the corolla in two rows and in
pairs, those of the outer row rather longer than and opposite those of
the inner row; filaments free, slender; anthers oblong, apiculate, the
cells opening laterally by longitudinal slits; stamens rudimentary or 0
in the pistillate flower; ovary usually 4-celled, each cell more or less
completely divided by the development of a false longitudinal partition
from its anterior face, rudimentary or 0 in the staminate flower; styles
4, spreading, 2-lobed at apex; stigmas 2-parted or lobed; ovule solitary
in each of the divisions of the cells. Fruit globose, oblong or conic,
1—10-seeded, surrounded at base by the enlarged persistent calyx. Seeds
pendulous, oblong, compressed; seed-coat thick and bony, dark, more or
less lustrous; embryo axile, straight or somewhat curved; cotyledons
foliaceous, ovate or lanceolate; radicle superior, cylindric, turned
toward the small hilum.
Diospyros, which is chiefly tropical, is widely distributed with more
than two hundred species in the two hemispheres, with a few species
extending beyond the tropics into eastern North America, eastern Asia,
southwestern Asia, and the Mediterranean region.
Diospyros produces hard close-grained valuable wood, with dark or black
heartwood and thick soft yellow sapwood. The ebony of commerce is partly
produced by different tropical species. The fruit is often edible, and
some of the species are important fruit-trees in China and Japan.
The generic name, from Διός and πυρός, is in allusion to the life-giving
properties of the fruit.
CONSPECTUS OF THE SPECIES OF THE UNITED STATES.
Flowers on branchlets of the year; anthers opening longitudinally
nearly throughout their entire length; filaments pubescent;
pistillate flowers with 8 rudimentary stamens; ovary nearly
glabrous; leaves oval; fruit green, yellow, orange color or
rarely black.
1. D. virginiana (A, C).
Flowers on branchlets of the previous year; anthers opening only near
the apex; filaments glabrous; pistillate flowers without
rudimentary stamens; ovary pubescent; leaves cuneate-oblong or
obovate; fruit black.
2. D. texana (C).
1. Diospyros virginiana L. Persimmon.
[Illustration: Fig. 730]
Leaves ovate-oblong to oval or elliptic, acuminate or abruptly acuminate
at apex, narrowed and cuneate or rounded or rarely broad and rounded at
base, coriaceous, glabrous, dark green and lustrous on the upper
surface, pale on the lower surface, 4′—6′ long and 2′—3′ wide, with a
broad flat midrib, about six pairs of conspicuous primary veins arcuate
near the margins and reticulate veinlets; falling in the autumn usually
without much change of color; petioles stout, glabrous or slightly
villose-pubescent, ½′—1′ in length. Flowers appearing when the leaves
are more than half grown on branchlets of the year, from March in the
extreme south to June in the north; the staminate in 2—3-flowered
pubescent pedunculate cymes, on pedicels from the axils of minute
lanceolate acute caducous bracts and furnished near the middle with two
minute-caducous bractlets; the pistillate solitary, on short recurved
pedicels, bibracteolate with conspicuous acute bractlets ciliate on the
margins and often ¼′ in length; corolla of the staminate flower tubular,
½′ long, slightly contracted below the short acute reflexed lobes
forming before expansion a pointed 4-angled bud rather longer than the
broad-ovate acute foliaceous ciliate calyx-lobes inflexed on the
margins; stamens with short slightly hairy filaments and
linear-lanceolate anthers opening throughout their length; pistillate
flower ¾′ long, with a greenish yellow or creamy white corolla nearly ½′
broad; stamens 8, inserted in one row below the middle of the corolla,
with short filaments and sagittate abortive or sometimes fertile
anthers; ovary conic, pilose toward the apex, ultimately 8-celled, and
gradually narrowed into the four slender styles hairy at the base. Fruit
on a short thick stem, ripening at the north late in autumn or earlier
southward, often persistent on the branches during the winter,
depressed-globose to ovoid or slightly obovoid, rounded or pointed at
apex, ¾′—2′ in diameter, yellow or pale orange color, often with a
bright cheek, and covered with a glaucous bloom, turning yellowish brown
when partly decayed by freezing, surrounded at base by the spreading
calyx 1′—1½′ in diameter, with broad ovate pointed lobes recurved on the
margins; flesh austere while green, yellowish brown, sweet and luscious
when fully ripened by the action of frost, or in some forms remaining
hard and green during the winter; seeds oblong, rounded on the dorsal
edge, nearly straight on the ventral edge, rounded at the ends, much
flattened, ½′ long and ⅓′ wide, with a thick hard pale brown rugose
testa, a narrow pale hilum and a slender raphe.
A tree, occasionally 50°—60° high, with a short trunk 16′—20′ in
diameter, spreading often pendulous branches forming a broad or narrow
round-topped head, and slender slightly zigzag glabrous or rarely
puberulous branchlets with a thick pith-cavity, light brown when they
first appear, becoming during their first winter light brown or ashy
gray and marked by occasional small orange-colored lenticels and by
elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars, with deep horizontal lunate
depressions; or in the primeval forest, under the most favorable
conditions, sometimes 100°—130° high, with a long slender trunk free of
branches for 70°—80° and rarely exceeding 2° in diameter; frequently not
more than 15° or 20° high and sometimes shrubby in habit. Winter-buds:
axillary, broad-ovoid, acute, ⅛′ long, with thick imbricated dark
red-brown or purple lustrous scales often persistent at the base of
young branchlets during the season. Bark of the trunk ¾′—1′ thick, dark
brown tinged with red, or dark gray, and deeply divided into thick
square plates broken into thin persistent scales, with heavy strong dark
brown sometimes nearly black heartwood often undeveloped until the tree
is over one hundred years old; used in turnery, for shoe-lasts,
plane-stocks, and preferred for shuttles to other American woods. The
fruit contains tannin, to which it owes its astringent qualities, and is
eaten in great quantities in the southern states. The inner bark is
astringent and bitter.
Distribution. Light sandy well drained soil, or in the Mississippi basin
sometimes on the deep rich bottom-lands of river valleys; Lighthouse
Point, New Haven, New Haven County, Connecticut, and Long Island, New
York, through southern Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana and
Illinois, to southeastern Iowa, eastern Kansas, central Oklahoma, and
southward to De Soto County, Florida, southern Alabama, Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Texas to the valley of the Colorado River (Burnet
County); very common in the south Atlantic and Gulf states, often
covering with shrubby growth by means of the stoloniferous roots
abandoned fields and springing up by the side of roads and fences;
ascending on the Appalachian Mountains to altitudes of 3500°; rare
toward the western limits of its range in Texas. In Missouri and
Arkansas passing into the var. _platycarpa_ Sarg. with larger
broad-ovate leaves rounded or cordate at base or rarely elliptic, more
or less densely pubescent on the lower surface, especially on the midrib
and petiole, often 2½′—4′ long and 2′—2½′ wide, and at the end of
vigorous shoots up to 6′ in length, and depressed-globose, yellow,
rarely nearly black (f. _atra_ Sarg.), fruit much depressed at top and
bottom, 1¾′—3′ wide and about 1′ high, with sweet succulent flesh,
ripening in September or early October, and seeds conspicuously rounded
on the dorsal edge, much compressed, dark chestnut-brown and lustrous,
only slightly rugose, ¾′ long and ½′ wide. A tree usually not more than
12°—25° high, with a trunk 16′—30′ in diameter and rather stouter
branchlets densely villose-pubescent sometimes for two or three years,
or becoming glabrate at the end of their first season. Hills near
Allenton, St. Louis County, and on the western slopes of the Ozark
Mountains and the adjacent prairies of southeastern Missouri and
prairies of northwestern Arkansas, eastern Kansas and Oklahoma. In Dade
County, Florida, _Diospyros virginiana_ is replaced by the var.
_Mosieri_ Sarg. with smaller staminate flowers, nearly globose fruit
with rather less compressed dark chestnut-brown lustrous only slightly
rugose seeds. A small tree with slightly fissured light gray bark.
Several named varieties of _Diospyros virginiana_ are distinguished and
cultivated by pomologists.
2. Diospyros texana Scheele. Black Persimmon. Chapote.
[Illustration: Fig. 731]
Leaves oblong-cuneate to obovate, rounded and often retuse at apex and
cuneate at base, covered below when they unfold with thick pale tomentum
and above with scattered long white hairs, and at maturity thick and
coriaceous, dark green and lustrous, glabrous or puberulous on the upper
surface, paler and pubescent on the lower surface, ¾′—1½′ long and
nearly 1′ wide, with a broad midrib and about 4 pairs of arcuate primary
veins and reticulate veinlets; unfolding in February and March, and
falling during the following winter without change of color; petioles
short, thick, and hairy. Flowers appearing in early spring when the
leaves are about one third grown, on branches of the previous year;
staminate on slender drooping pedicels furnished near the middle with
minute caducous bractlets, in 1—3-flowered crowded pubescent fascicles;
pistillate on stouter club-shaped pedicels, solitary or rarely in pairs;
calyx of the staminate flower ⅛′ long and deeply divided into 5 ovate or
lanceolate silky-tomentose lobes recurved after the opening of the
flower, and much shorter than the corolla ⅛′ long, creamy white, and
slightly contracted below the 5 short spreading rounded lobes ciliate on
the margins; stamens, with glabrous filaments shorter than the corolla,
and linear-lanceolate anthers opening at apex only by short slits;
pistillate flowers without rudimentary stamens, ⅓′ long, with oblong
acute silky-tomentose calyx-lobes half the length of the pubescent
corolla nearly ½′ across the short spreading lobes; ovary ovoid,
pubescent like the young fruit, ultimately 8-celled. Fruit ripening in
August, subglobose, ½′—1′ in diameter, and 3—8-seeded, surrounded at
base by the large thickened leathery calyx sometimes 1′ in diameter,
with oblong pubescent reflexed lobes, the thick tough black skin
inclosing thin sweet insipid juicy dark flesh; seeds triangular, rounded
on the back, narrowed and flattened at the pointed apex, ⅓′ long, about
⅛′ thick, with a bony lustrous light red pitted coat.
An intricately branched tree, occasionally 40°—50° high, with a trunk
18′—20′ in diameter, dividing at some distance above the ground into a
number of stout upright branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and
slender terete slightly zigzag branchlets, coated at first with pale or
rufous tomentum, ashy gray, glabrous or puberulous during their first
winter, later becoming brown and marked by minute pale lenticels and by
small elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars displaying a lunate row of
fibro-vascular bundle-scars; often much smaller, and toward the northern
and western limits of its range a low many-stemmed shrub. Winter-buds
obtuse, barely more than 1/16′ long, with broad-ovate scales rounded on
the back and coated with rufous tomentum. Bark of the trunk smooth,
light gray slightly tinged with red, the outer layer falling away in
large irregularly shaped patches displaying the smooth gray inner bark.
Wood heavy, with black heartwood often streaked with yellow and clear
bright yellow sapwood; used in turnery and for the handles of tools. The
fruit, which is exceedingly austere until it is fully ripe, stains
black, and is sometimes used by Mexicans in the valley of the Rio Grande
to dye sheepskins.
Distribution. Southwestern Texas, Matagorda County (neighborhood of
Matagorda and Bay City) to the lower Rio Grande, and northward to San
Saba, Lampasas and Bexar Counties; in Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and
Tamaulipas; possibly in southern Lower California; abundant in western
and southern Texas: in the neighborhood of the coast on the borders of
prairies in rich moist soil; westward on dry rocky mesas and in isolated
cañons; very common and of its largest size in the region between the
Sierra Madre and the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in Nuevo Leon and
Tamaulipas.
LVIII. STYRACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with stellate pubescence or lepidote, watery juice, and
scaly buds. Leaves alternate, simple, penniveined, without stipules.
Flowers regular, perfect; calyx more or less adnate to the tube of the
corolla; disk 0; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening
longitudinally; ovary superior or partly superior, crowned with a simple
style; ovules anatropous. Fruit drupaceous, with thin dry flesh, and a
thick-walled 1-seeded bony stone. Seeds, with albumen.
The Storax family is confined to North and South America, the
Mediterranean region, eastern Asia and the Malay Archipelago. Of the six
genera of this family two are represented in the flora of North America.
CONSPECTUS OF THE GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES.
Calyx adherent to the whole surface of the ovary; corolla 4-lobed.
Fruit oblong-obovoid, 2 or 4-celled and 2 or 4-winged.
1. Halesia.
Calyx adherent to the base only of the ovary; corolla usually
5-parted. Fruit subglobose, 1-celled.
2. Styrax.
1. HALESIA L. SILVER BELL TREE.
Trees or shrubs, with stellate pubescence, slender terete pithy
branchlets, without a terminal bud, axillary buds with imbricated
accrescent scales, and fibrous roots. Leaves involute in the bud, thin,
elliptic, oblong-ovate or oblong-ovoid, denticulate, deciduous. Flowers
opening in early spring, on slender elongated drooping ebracteolate
pedicels from the axils of foliaceous acuminate or acute caducous
bracts, in fascicles or short racemes from the axils of leaves of the
previous year; calyx-tube obconic, adherent to the whole surface of the
ovary, the limb short, 4-toothed, with minute triangular teeth, open in
the bud; corolla epigynous, campanulate, 4-lobed, or divided nearly to
the base, the lobes convolute or imbricated in the bud, thin and white
or rarely tinged with rose; stamens 8—16; filaments elongated, shorter
than the corolla, slightly attached at base, or sometimes free,
flattened below; anthers oblong, adnate or free at the very base; ovary
2 or 4-celled, gradually contracted into an elongate glabrous or
tomentose style stigmatic at apex; ovules 4 in each cell, attached by
elongated funiculi at the middle of the axis, the 2 upper ascending, the
2 lower pendulous; raphe dorsal; micropyle inferior and superior. Fruit
ripening in the autumn, elongated, oblong or obovoid and gradually
narrowed at base; skin tough, separable, light green and lustrous,
turning reddish brown late in the autumn; exocarp indehiscent, thick,
becoming dry and corky at maturity, produced into 2 or 4 broad thin
wings cuneate at base and rounded at apex; stone bony, cylindric,
obovoid or ellipsoid, gradually narrowed at base into a slender stipe
inclosed in the wings, narrowed above and terminating in the enlarged
style protruding above the wings, usually obscurely and irregularly
8-angled or sulcate, 1—4-celled. Seed solitary in each cell, elongated,
cylindric; seed-coat thin, light brown, lustrous, adherent to the walls
of the stone, the delicate inner coat attached to the copious fleshy
albumen; embryo terete, axile, erect; cotyledons oblong, as long as the
elongated radicle turned toward the minute hilum.
Halesia is confined to the southeastern United States.
The generic name is in honor of Stephen Hales (1677—1761), an English
clergyman, author of “Vegetable Staticks.”
CONSPECTUS OF THE SPECIES OF THE UNITED STATES.
Fruit 4-winged; flowers fascicled; corolla slightly lobed.
Fruit oblong to slightly obovoid.
Flowers hardly more than ½′ long; fruit 1½′ in length.
1. H. carolina (A, C).
Flowers 2′ long; fruit up to 2′ in length.
2. H. monticola (A).
Fruit clavate; flowers usually not more than ¼′ long.
3. H. parviflora (C).
Fruit 2-winged; flowers often racemose; corolla divided nearly to the
base.
4. H. diptera (C).
1. Halesia carolina L.
_Mohrodendron carolinum_ Britt.
[Illustration: Fig. 732]
Leaves elliptic to oblong-obovate, abruptly acuminate and long-pointed
at apex, gradually narrowed and rounded or cuneate at base, and dentate
with small remote callous teeth, slightly pubescent or covered below
when they unfold with thick hoary tomentum and densely
stellate-pubescent above (var. _mollis_ Perkins), and at maturity dark
yellow-green and glabrous on the upper surface, pale and glabrous or
slightly villose below on the slender yellow midrib and primary veins,
3′—4′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, and on leading shoots up to 6′—7′ in length;
turning yellow in the autumn before falling; petioles slender, glabrous,
pubescent or tomentose, early in the season, becoming nearly glabrous,
¼′—½′ in length. Flowers about ½′ long, on glabrous or densely or
slightly villose pedicels ½′—¾′ in length, from the axils of ovate
caducous serrate glabrous or pubescent bracts rounded at apex, in
crowded fascicles; calyx obconic, glabrous, slightly pubescent or
hoary-tomentose (var. _mollis_ Lange), the lobes ciliate; corolla
narrowed below into a short tube, ¾′ across, sometimes faintly tinged
with rose, rarely divided nearly to the base (var. _dialypetala_ Schn.);
stamens 10—16; filaments villose with occasional white hairs; ovary
4-celled. Fruit oblong to oblong-obovate, 4-winged, 1½′ long, ½′—¾′ in
diameter; stone ellipsoid to slightly obovoid, narrowed below into a
short stipe and above into the slender apex terminating in the elongated
persistent style, slightly angled, ½′—⅝′ long, usually 1-seeded by
abortion; seed rounded at the narrow ends, ¼′—⅓′ long.
A round-headed tree, rarely 40° high, with a short trunk often divided
near the ground into several spreading stems, and 12′—18′ in diameter,
small branches, and slender branchlets glabrous or densely pubescent
early in the season, becoming slightly pubescent or nearly glabrous and
orange-brown, and marked by large obcordate leaf-scars during their
first winter and dark red-brown the following year; more often a shrub
with wide-spreading stems. Winter-buds ellipsoid to ovoid, ⅛′ long, with
thick broad-ovate dark red acute puberulous scales rounded on the back,
those of the inner rows becoming strap-shaped, bright yellow and
sometimes ½′ long. Bark of the trunk ½′ thick, slightly ridged, reddish
brown, separating into thin closely appressed scales. Wood light, soft,
close-grained, light brown with thick lighter-colored sapwood.
Distribution. Wooded slopes and the banks of streams, southern West
Virginia (Fayette and Summers Counties); Piedmont region of North and
South Carolina, ascending to altitudes of 2000°, through central Georgia
to western Florida, and through Alabama south to Dallas and Mount Vernon
Counties; the var. _mollis_ with the type and the more common form in
western Florida southward to Suwanee County. A seedling shrubby Halesia
(var. _Meehanii_ Perkins) with thicker smaller darker green rugose
leaves, smaller cup-shaped flowers on shorter pedicels, appeared many
years ago in the Meehan Nurseries at Germantown, Pennsylvania, and is
possibly a hybrid but of obscure origin.
Often cultivated in the eastern United States, in California and in
western and central Europe; hardy as far north as eastern Massachusetts.
2. Halesia monticola Sarg.
[Illustration: Fig. 733]
Leaves elliptic to oblong-obovate, abruptly acuminate at apex, cuneate
or occasionally rounded at base, remotely dentate with minute blunt
teeth, covered above when they unfold with short white hairs and below
with thick hoary tomentum, half-grown and pubescent on the midrib below
when the flowers open at the end of May, and at maturity thin, dark dull
green on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, glabrous with the
exception of a few hairs on the lower side of the slender midrib and
primary veins, 8′—11′ long and 1½′—2½′ wide; turning yellow in the
autumn before falling; petioles slender, villose-pubescent when they
first appear, soon glabrous, ½′—¾′ in length. Flowers 2′ long on
pedicels ½′—1′ in length, from the axils of obovate or elliptic acute
pubescent bracts ½′—¾′ long and ¼′ wide; calyx obconic, glabrous or
slightly villose-pubescent; corolla 1′ in diameter, contracted below
into a short limb; stamens 10—16; filaments slightly villose toward the
base, ovary 4-celled. Fruit oblong-obovoid, cuneate at base, 4-winged,
1¾′—2′ long, 1′ in diameter; stone ovoid-ellipsoid, abruptly narrowed
below into a short stipe, gradually narrowed above into the long apex,
prominently angled about 1¼′—1⅓′ in length.
A tree, often 80°—90° high, with a trunk 3° in diameter and free of
branches for 50°—60°, comparatively small spreading and erect branches
forming a round-topped head and slender branchlets covered when they
first appear with pale hairs, soon glabrous, lustrous, light red-brown
or orange-brown during their first winter and dark red-brown in their
second year. Winter-buds ovoid to ellipsoid, acuminate, much compressed,
gibbous on the back, the outer scales thick, slightly keeled on the
back, lustrous, bright red, ⅓′ long. Bark of the trunk thick, separating
freely into long broad loosely attached red-brown plates ½′—¾′ thick.
Distribution. Mountain slopes at altitudes from 3000°—4000°, western
North Carolina, eastern Tennessee and western Georgia; passing into the
var. _vestita_ Sarg., with leaves often rounded at base, coated below
and on the petioles when they unfold with snow-white tomentum, and at
maturity pubescent over the lower surface, especially on the midrib and
veins, and occasionally pale rose-colored flowers (f. _rosea_ Sarg.);
banks of streams, near Marion, McDowell County, North Carolina; Heber
Springs, Carroll County, Arkansas; occasionally cultivated with the var.
_vestita_ and hardy in the Arnold Arboretum and in Rochester, New York.
_Halesia monticola_ in cultivation grows rapidly with a single trunk;
and is hardy in eastern Massachusetts.
3. Halesia parviflora Michx.
[Illustration: Fig. 734]
Leaves oblong-ovate to slightly obovate or elliptic, abruptly
long-pointed or acuminate at apex, narrowed and cuneate or rounded at
base, finely serrate with minute glandular teeth, densely covered when
they unfold with hoary tomentum, becoming pubescent or glabrous, 2½′—3¼′
long and 1′—1¼′ wide, with a slender midrib and primary veins
villose-pubescent below; petioles hoary-tomentose when they first
appear, becoming glabrous, ¼′—⅓′ in length. Flowers opening the end of
March or early in April, ¼′—⅓′ long, on pedicels more or less densely
villose-pubescent with white hairs, becoming nearly glabrous, ⅓′—⅖′ in
length; calyx densely hoary-tomentose or rarely villose-pubescent;
corolla ⅓′—½′ in diameter; stamens 10—16, filaments slightly villose.
Fruit ripening in August and September, clavate, gradually narrowed into
the long stipitate base, ¾′—1½′ long, 4-winged, the wings narrow, of
equal width or occasionally with the alternate wings narrower than the
others; stone ovoid, abruptly narrowed below into a short stipe,
gradually narrowed to the apex, obscurely angled, ¾′—1¼′ long.
A slender tree, 25°—30° high, with a long trunk 8′—10′ in diameter,
small light brown slightly ridged branches and slender branchlets
hoary-tomentose when they first appear, becoming pubescent or nearly
glabrous by the end of their first season and light gray-brown in their
second year; or a shrub only a few feet tall. Winter-buds ovoid, acute,
slightly compressed, villose, about ⅛′ long. Bark of the trunk thick,
dark brown or nearly black, and divided by deep longitudinal furrows
into narrow rounded rough ridges.
Distribution. Northern Florida, in sandy uplands (St. John, Clay,
Jackson, Gadsden and Lafayette Counties); not common; Alabama (Lee
County); eastern Mississippi (Laurel, Jones County), and eastern
Oklahoma (near Page, Le Flore County).
4. Halesia diptera Ellis.
_Mohrodendron dipterum_ Britt.
[Illustration: Fig. 735]
Leaves ovate to obovate, oval or elliptic, abruptly long-pointed or
rarely rounded at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate or rounded at
base, undulate-serrate with remote minute callous teeth, coated below
with pale tomentum and pubescent above when they unfold, and at maturity
thin, light green and glabrous or pubescent on the slender midrib on the
upper surface and paler and soft-pubescent on the lower surface, 3′—4′
long and 2′—2½′ wide, and at the end of vigorous branches up to 8′ long
and 3′ wide, with pale conspicuous arcuate veins and reticulate
veinlets; petioles slender, pubescent, ½′—¾′ in length. Flowers opening
from the middle of March to the end of April, usually nearly 1′ long, on
slender tomentose pedicels 1½′—2′ in length, from the axils of obovate
puberulous bracts rounded or acute at apex and ½′—¾′ long, in
few-flowered fascicles or in 4—6-flowered racemes; calyx thickly covered
with hoary tomentum, the short lobes nearly glabrous on the inner
surface; corolla puberulous on the outer surface, divided nearly to the
base into slightly obovate or oval spreading lobes; stamens 8—16,
usually 8, nearly as long as the corolla; filaments covered with pale
hairs, and sometimes free from the corolla; ovary usually 2, rarely
4-celled and covered, like the style, with pale pubescence. Fruit oblong
to slightly obovoid, compressed, 1½′—2′ long, often nearly 1′ wide, with
two broad wings and often with 2 or rarely 3 narrow wings between them;
stone ellipsoid, 1½′—1¾′ long, conspicuously ridged, gradually narrowed
below into the short slender stipe and above into the thickened
pubescent style; seed acuminate at the ends, about ¾′ in length.
A tree, occasionally 30° high, with a short or rarely a tall trunk
8′—10′ in diameter, spreading branches forming a wide head and slender
branchlets light green and more or less thickly covered with pale
pubescence when they first appear, usually becoming glabrous, orange
color, or reddish brown, lustrous and marked by the large elevated
obcordate leaf-scars during their first winter, dark red-brown in their
second season and dividing the following year into irregular pale
longitudinal fissures; more often a shrub, with numerous stout spreading
stems. Winter-buds ovoid, obtuse, 1/16′ long, with broad-ovate acute
light red pubescent scales, those of the inner ranks becoming
strap-shaped, scarious and ¼′ long. Bark of the trunk ⅓′—½′ thick, brown
tinged with red, and divided by irregular longitudinal often broad
fissures, and separating into small thin closely appressed scales. Wood
light, soft, strong, close-grained, light brown with thick
lighter-colored sapwood.
Distribution. Low wet woods and the borders of swamps and streams; near
Savannah (_Elliott_) and in southwestern Georgia, western Florida (Leon
and Gadsden Counties), southern Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to
the valley of the lower Neches River, Texas, and to southwestern
Arkansas (Miller County).
Occasionally cultivated in the gardens of the eastern United States and
western Europe. Doubtfully hardy in Massachusetts and western New York.
2. STYRAX L.
Trees or shrubs, lepidote or stellate-tomentose except on the upper
surface of the leaves, with slender terete slightly zigzag branchlets,
without a terminal bud, axillary buds, with imbricated scales, and
fibrous roots. Leaves involute in the bud, entire or slightly serrate.
Flowers usually white on short ebracteolate drooping pedicels from the
axils of small bracts, in simple or branched usually drooping axillary
racemes; calyx cup-shaped, adnate to the base of the ovary or nearly
free, the margin truncate, obscurely or conspicuously 5-toothed or
rarely 2 or 5-parted; corolla epigynous, campanulate, 5 or rarely 6 or
7-parted, with a short tube usually longer than the lanceolate oblong or
spatulate erect and spreading or revolute lobes valvate or imbricated in
the bud, stamens 8—13, usually 10, longer than the corolla slightly
united below into a ring or short tube; filaments flattened above; cells
of the anthers linear parallel, erect; ovary broad-conic, subglobose or
depressed, densely villose or rarely glabrous, at first 3-celled,
becoming 1-celled or nearly 1-celled after anthesis, crowned by a
subulate or thickened style terminating in a small indistinctly 3-lobed
or capitate stigma; ovules few or rarely solitary, ascending; raphe
dorsal, micropyle inferior. Fruit globose or slightly obovoid,
drupaceous; pericarp hard and indehiscent or irregularly 3-valved or
fleshy and irregularly dehiscent; endocarp glabrous, crustaceous or
indurate; seed 1 by abortion or very rarely 2, filling the cavity of the
stone, erect; testa membranaceous, mostly adherent to the walls of the
stone; albumen fleshy or rarely horny; cotyledons usually broad, the
elongated terete radicle turned toward the broad basal hilum.
Styrax is widely distributed in warm and tropical countries except in
tropical and south Africa and in Australasia, extending northward into
the southeastern United States and to California, southern Europe,
central and western China and central Japan. Of nearly one hundred
species which are now distinguished five are found within the territory
of the United States; one of these occasionally becomes a small tree.
Storax and benzoin, aromatic resinous balsams, are obtained from _Styrax
officinale_ L. of southern Europe and Asia Minor, and from _Styrax
Benzoin_ Dryand. of Malaysia.
The generic name is that of the Greek name of _Styrax officinale_.
1. Styrax grandiflora Ait.