Part 101

A tree, occasionally 60°—70° high, with a trunk 15′—16′ in diameter, small erect and spreading smooth gray-brown or reddish brown branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and slender branchlets covered when they first appear with snowy white tomentum, soon glabrous, and bright or dull reddish brown, and marked in their second year with the nearly orbicular elevated conspicuous scars of fallen leaves. Bark of the trunk thin, smooth, reddish, marked by pale blotches.

Distribution. Florida, Arch Creek Hummock north of Little River, and on Paradise and Long Keys in the Everglades, Dade County.

XLIX. MELASTOMACEÆ.

Trees, shrubs, or herbs with watery juice. Leaves opposite, rarely verticellate, 3—9-nerved, usually petiolate; stipules 0. Flowers regular, perfect, usually showy, rarely fragrant, in terminal clusters; calyx usually 4 or 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; petals as many as the lobes of the calyx, inserted on its throat, imbricated or convolute in the bud; stamens as many or twice as many as the petals, inserted in 1 series with them, often inclined or decimate; anthers 2-celled, attached at the base, opening by a terminal pore; ovary 2 or many-celled; style terminal, simple, straight or declinate; stigma capitate, simple or lobed; ovules numerous, minute, anatropous. Fruit capsular or baccate, inclosed in the calyx-tube; seeds minute; testa coriaceous or crustaceous; hilum lateral or basal; embryo without albumen.

This family with 164 genera and a large number of species is chiefly confined to the tropics, and is most abundant in those of South America.

1. TETRAZYGIA A. Rich.

Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets. Leaves opposite, petiolate, oblong-ovate to ovate-lanceolate, entire or denticulate, 3—5-nerved, persistent, scurfy, like the young branchlets, peduncles and calyx-tube. Flowers perfect in many-flowered terminal panicles or corymbs; calyx-tube urceolate or globose, adnate to the ovary, the limb constricted above the ovary and dilated below the apex, the lobes short or elongated; petals obovate, obtuse, convolute in the bud; stamens twice as many as the petals; filaments subulate; anthers linear-subulate, erect or slightly recurved, attached at base, 2-celled, opening by a minute pore at apex, their connective not extended below the cells; ovary 3—6-celled; style filiform, curved, exserted, surrounded at base by a short sheath 8—10-toothed at apex; ovules indefinite, minute, sessile on an axile placenta. Fruit a 3 or 4-celled berry, crowned by the persistent tube of the calyx; seeds numerous, minute, obpyramidal, thickened and incurved at apex; testa coriaceous, slightly pitted; hilum basal; cotyledons thick; radicle short, turned toward the hilum.

Tetrazygia with 14 species is confined to the West Indies and southern Florida where one species has been discovered, the only tree of the great family of the Melastomaceæ found in the United States.

The generic name is from τέτρα and ζυγόν in allusion to the often 4-parted flowers.

1. Tetrazygia bicolor Cogn.

Leaves oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, gradually narrowed and rounded at base, 3-nerved, entire, undulate and slightly thickened on the revolute margins, dark green on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 3′—4½′ long and 1′—1¾′ wide; petioles stout, ¾—1′ in length. Flowers appearing from March to May, ⅘′ in diameter, short-stalked, in open cymose panicles; calyx urceolate, 4 or 5-lobed, the lobes nearly obsolete; petals 4 or 5, oblong-obovate, reflexed after anthesis, white; ovary 3-celled, style surrounded at base by a short sheath 10-toothed at apex. Fruit ripening in late autumn or early winter, oblong to ovoid, conspicuously constricted at apex, ¼′—⅓′ in length and ⅙′—⅕′ in diameter.

In Florida a shrub, or in the dense woods of the keys of the Everglades a slender tree, often 30° high, with an erect trunk 3′ or 4′ in diameter, covered with thin light gray-brown slightly fissured bark, small spreading branches becoming erect toward their apex and gracefully drooping leaves; or in the sandy soil of open Pine-woods often less than 3° in height.

Distribution. Florida, on the Everglade Keys, Dade County; on the Bahama Islands and in Cuba.

L. ARALIACEÆ.

Trees, shrubs, or herbs, with watery juice and scaly buds. Leaves alternate, compound or simple, petiolate, with stipules. Flowers in racemose or panicled umbels; parts of the flower in 5’s; disk epigynous; ovule solitary, suspended from the apex of the cell, anatropous; raphe ventral, the micropyle superior. Fruit baccate. Seeds, with albumen.

The Aralia family with fifty-four genera is chiefly tropical, with a few genera extending beyond the tropics into the northern hemisphere, especially into North America and eastern Asia. The widely distributed and largely extratropical genus Aralia is represented by one arborescent species in the flora of the United States. Hedera, the Ivy, of this family, is commonly cultivated in the temperate parts of the United States, and some species of Panax and Acanthopanax from eastern Asia are found in gardens in the northeastern states.

1. ARALIA L.

Aromatic spiny trees and shrubs, with stout pithy branchlets, and thick fleshy roots, or bristly or glabrous perennial herbs. Leaves digitate or once or twice pinnate, the pinnæ serrulate; stipules produced on the expanded and clasping base of the petiole. Flowers perfect, polygamo-monœcious or polygamo-diœcious, on slender jointed pedicels, small, greenish white; calyx-tube coherent with the ovary, the limb truncate, repand or minutely toothed, the teeth valvate in the bud; petals imbricated in the bud, inserted by their broad base on the margin of the disk, ovate, obtuse or acute and slightly inflexed at apex; stamens inserted on the margin of the disk, alternate with the petals; filaments filiform; anthers oblong or rarely ovoid, attached on the back, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary 2—5-celled; styles 2—5, in the fertile flower distinct and erect or slightly united at base, spreading and incurved above the middle, or incurved from the base and sometimes inflexed at apex, crowned with large capitate stigmas, in the sterile flower short and united. Fruit fleshy, laterally compressed or 3—5-angled, crowned with the remnants of the style; nutlets 2—5, orbicular, ovoid or oblong, compressed, crustaceous, light reddish brown, 1-seeded. Seed compressed; seed-coat thin, light brown, adnate to the thin fleshy albumen; cotyledons ovate-oblong, as long as the straight radicle.

Aralia with forty species is confined to North America and Asia.

The name is of obscure meaning.

1. Aralia spinosa L. Hercules’ Club.

Leaves clustered at the end of the branches, twice pinnate, 3°—4° long and 2½° wide, with a stout light brown petiole 18′—20′ in length, clasping the stem with an enlarged base and armed with slender prickles, or occasionally unarmed; pinnæ unequally pinnate, usually with 5 or 6 pairs of lateral leaflets and a long-stalked terminal leaflet, and often furnished at base with a pinnate or simple leaflet; leaflets ovate, acute, dentate or crenate, cuneate or more or less rounded at base, short-petiolulate, when they unfold lustrous, bronze-green, and slightly pilose on the midrib and primary veins, and at maturity thin, dark green above, pale beneath, 2′—3′ long and 1½′ wide, with a thin midrib occasionally furnished with small prickles and slender primary veins nearly parallel with their margins; in the autumn turning light yellow before falling; stipules acute, about 1′ long, at first puberulous on the back and ciliate on the margins. Flowers 1/16′ long, appearing at midsummer on long slender pubescent straw-colored pedicels, in many-flowered umbels arranged in compound panicles, with light brown puberulous branches becoming purple in the autumn, forming a terminal racemose cluster 3°—4° long, and rising solitary or 2 or 3 together above the spreading leaves; bracts and bractlets lanceolate, acute, scarious, persistent; petals white, acute, inflexed at apex; ovary often abortive; styles connivent. Fruit ripening in autumn, black, ⅛′ in diameter, globose, 3—5-angled, crowned with the blackened styles, with thin purple very juicy flesh; seeds oblong, rounded at the ends, about 1/10′ long.

A tree, 30°—35° high, with a trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, stout wide-spreading branches, and branchlets ½′—⅔′ in diameter, armed like the branches and young trunks with stout straight or slightly incurved orange-colored scattered prickles, and nearly encircled by the conspicuous narrow leaf-scars marked by a row of prominent fibro-vascular bundle-scars, light orange-colored in their first season, lustrous and marked irregularly with oblong pale lenticels, becoming light brown in their second year, with bright green inner bark; more often a shrub, with a cluster of unbranched stems 6°—20° tall. Winter-buds: terminal conic, blunt at apex, ½′—¾′ long, with thin chestnut-brown scales; axillary triangular, flattened, about ¼′ long and broad. Bark of the trunk dark brown, about ⅛′ thick, and divided by broad shallow fissures into wide rounded ridges irregularly broken on the surface. Wood close-grained, light, soft, brittle, brown streaked with yellow, with lighter colored sapwood of 2 or 3 layers of annual growth. The bark of the roots and the berries are stimulant and diaphoretic, and are sometimes used in medicine and in domestic practice.

Distribution. Deep moist soil in the neighborhood of streams; southern Pennsylvania to southern Indiana, southeastern Iowa and southeastern Missouri, and southward to northern Florida, western Louisiana, and eastern Texas; probably of its largest size on the foothills of the Big Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.

Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental plant in the eastern states and in western Europe; hardy in eastern Massachusetts.

LI. NYSSACEÆ.

Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, scaly buds, alternate entire dentate or serrate deciduous leaves, without stipules. Flowers diœcious, polygamo-diœcious or perfect; staminate, calyx minute, 5-toothed or lobed; petals 5 or more, imbricated in the bud, or 0; stamens as many, twice as many, or fewer than the petals, usually in 2 series; filaments sometimes of 2 lengths, elongated, filiform or subulate; disk fleshy, depressed at apex; pistillate flowers, calyx-tube adnate to the ovary; petals 5 or more, imbricated in the bud; ovary 1-celled or 6—10-celled; ovule solitary, pendulous from the apex of the cell, anatropous; micropyle superior; disk epigynous, pulvinate, the apex depressed or convex, or 0; style subulate, curved or spirally involute at apex, or 2-parted, or conic and divided into as many stigmatic lobes as the cells of the ovary. Fruit drupaceous or subsamaroid, crowned with the remnants of the calyx, 1-celled and 1-seeded, or 3—5-celled, the cells thin, 4-seeded; seed pendent, testa membranaceous or thin, albumen fleshy; cotyledons foliaceous or thin; radicle cylindric.

Nyssaceæ with 3 genera, Nyssa L., Camptotheca Decne. and Davidia Baill. and 8 species is confined to eastern North America, western China, Thibet, the Himalayas and the Malay Archipelago.

1. NYSSA L.

Trees, with leaves conduplicate in the bud, petiolate, sometimes remotely angulate or toothed, mostly crowded at the end of the branches. Flowers polygamo-diœcious, minute, greenish white; staminate on slender pedicels from the axils of minute caducous bracts, in simple or compound clusters on long axillary peduncles bibracteolate near the middle or at the apex or sometimes without bractlets; calyx disciform or cup-shaped, the limb 5-toothed; petals 5, imbricated in the bud, equal or unequal, ovate or linear-oblong, thick, inserted on the margin of the conspicuous pulvinate entire or lobed disk, erect; stamens 5—12, exserted; filaments filiform; anthers oblong; ovary 0; pistillate flowers on axillary peduncles, in 2 or few-flowered clusters, sessile or nearly so, in the axils of conspicuous bracts and furnished with 1 or 2 small lateral bractlets, or solitary and surrounded by 2—4 bractlets; calyx-tube campanulate, sometimes slightly urceolate, the limb 5-toothed; petals small, thick, and spreading; stamens 5—10; filaments short; anthers fertile or sterile; disk less developed than in the staminate flower, depressed in the centre; ovary 1 or 2-celled; style terete, elongated, recurved, stigmatic toward the apex or the inner face; raphe ventral. Fruit drupaceous, short-oblong, fleshy, urceolate at apex; flesh thin, oily, acidulous; stone thick-walled, bony, terete or compressed, ribbed or winged, 1 or rarely 2-celled, usually 1-seeded. Seed filling the cavity of the stone; seed-coat pale; embryo straight.

Nyssa with six species is confined to the eastern United States and to southern and eastern Asia, where one species is distributed from the eastern Himalayas to the island of Java and another occurs in central and western China. The American species produce tough wood, with intricately contorted and twisted grain.

_Nyssa_, the name of a nymph, was given to this genus from the fact that one of the species grows in water.

CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES.

Pistillate flowers in 2 or few-flowered clusters, their calyx disciform; fruit blue, not more than ⅔′ long; stone with broad rounded ribs. Stone indistinctly ribbed; leaves linear-oblong to oval or obovate. 1. N. sylvatica (A, C). Stone prominently ribbed; leaves oblanceolate to oblong or elliptic. 2. N. biflora (C). Pistillate flowers solitary, their calyx cup-shaped; fruit 1′ or more long. Fruit red; stone with prominent wings; leaves oblong-oval or obovate, usually obtuse at apex. 3. N. ogeche (C). Fruit purple; stone with acute ridges; leaves oval or oblong, acute or acuminate at apex. 4. N. aquatica (A, C).

1. Nyssa sylvatica Marsh. Tupelo. Pepperidge. Sour Gum.

Leaves crowded at the end of lateral branchlets or remote on vigorous shoots, linear-oblong, lanceolate, oval or obovate, acute or acuminate or sometimes contracted into a short broad point at apex, cuneate or occasionally rounded at base, entire, with slightly thickened margins, or rarely coarsely dentate, coated when they unfold with rufous tomentum, especially on the lower surface, or pubescent or sometimes nearly glabrous, and at maturity thick and firm, dark green and lustrous above, pale and often villose below, principally along the broad midrib and on the primary veins, 2′—5′ long and ½′—3′ wide; turning early in autumn bright scarlet on the upper surface only; petioles slender or stout, terete or wing-margined, ciliate, ¼′—1½′ in length, and often bright red. Flowers appearing in early spring when the leaves are about one third grown on slender pubescent or tomentose peduncles ½′—1½′ long, staminate in many-flowered dense or lax compound heads, pistillate in 2 to several-flowered clusters, sessile in the axils of conspicuous often foliaceous bracts, and furnished with 2 smaller acute hairy bractlets; calyx of the staminate flower disciform; petals thick, ovate-oblong, acute, rounded at apex, erect or slightly spreading, early deciduous; stamens exserted in the staminate flower, shorter than the petals in the pistillate flower; stigma stout, exserted, reflexed above the middle, 0 in the staminate flower. Fruit ripening in October, 1—3 from each flower-cluster, ovoid, ⅓′—⅔′ long, dark blue, with thin acrid flesh; stone light brown, ovoid, rounded at base, pointed at apex, terete or more or less flattened, and 10—12-ribbed, with narrow indistinct pale ribs rounded on the back.

A tree, with thick hard roots and few rootlets, often surrounded by root-sprouts, occasionally 100° or rarely 125° high, with a trunk sometimes 5° in diameter, numerous slender pendulous tough flexible branches forming a head sometimes short, cylindric and flat-topped, sometimes low and broad, or on trees crowded in the forest narrow, pyramidal or conic, and sometimes inversely conic and broad and flat at the top, and branchlets when they first appear light green to orange color, and in their first winter nearly glabrous or pale or rufous-pubescent, light red-brown marked by minute scattered pale lenticels and by small lunate leaf-scars displaying the ends of 3 conspicuous groups of fibro-vascular bundles, later becoming darker and developing short stout spur-like lateral branchlets; generally in the northern and extreme southern states much smaller, and rarely more than 50°-60° tall. Winter-buds obtuse, ¼′ long, with ovate acute apiculate dark red puberulous imbricated scales, those of the inner ranks accrescent, bright-colored at maturity, and marking the base of the branchlet with obscure ring-like scars. Bark of the trunk ¾′—1½′ thick, light brown often tinged with red, and deeply fissured, the surface of the ridges covered with small irregularly shaped scales. Wood heavy, soft, strong, very tough, not durable, light yellow or nearly white, with thick lighter colored sapwood of 80—100 layers of annual growth; used for the hubs of wheels, rollers in glass factories, ox-yokes, wharf-piles, and sometimes for the soles of shoes.

Distribution. Borders of swamps in wet imperfectly drained soil, and often especially southward on high wooded mountain slopes; valley of the Kennebec River, Maine, to southern Ontario, central Michigan, southeastern Missouri and eastern Oklahoma, and southward to northern Florida, and to the valley of the Brazos River, Texas; of its largest size on the southern Appalachian Mountains.

Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental tree in the eastern states, but difficult to transplant except when very young. The first tree in the eastern states to assume autumn colors of the leaves.

2. Nyssa biflora Walt.

Leaves oblanceolate, oblong, elliptic or rarely ovate, acute or acuminate or occasionally rounded at the narrow apex, cuneate or rounded at the gradually narrowed base, and entire, when they unfold silky-villose above and hoary-tomentose beneath, soon becoming glabrous, dark yellow-green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler and sometimes glaucous on the lower surface, 2′—4′ long and ¾′—1′ wide, with a prominent midrib and numerous slender veins; petioles stout, ¼′—½′ in length. Flowers appearing when the leaves are nearly fully grown; staminate on slender villose pedicels, in many-flowered loose clusters on slender hairy peduncles 1′—1½′ in length; pistillate in pairs on rather stouter peduncles usually about 1′ long; calyx of the staminate flower disciform; petals oblong-ovate, rounded at apex, white, erect or slightly spreading, early deciduous. Fruit solitary or in pairs, on peduncles 1′—1½′ in length, oval or ellipsoid, dark blue, lustrous, about ⅓′ long, with acrid pulp; stone oval, compressed, narrowed at the ends, and prominently ribbed.

A tree, rarely more than 30° high, with a slender trunk gradually tapering upward from a swollen and much enlarged base, small spreading branches forming a narrow pyramidal or round-topped head, branchlets slightly villose when they first appear, soon glabrous, bright reddish brown in their first winter, becoming darker the following year, and numerous erect thick roots rising above the surface of the water. Winter-buds acute, dark red-brown, puberulous, and about ⅛′ long, the inner scales hoary-tomentose. Bark about 1′ thick, deeply furrowed, gray to very dark reddish brown.

Distribution. Small Pine-barren ponds of the coastal plain from North Carolina to central and eastern Florida, southern Alabama and Mississippi, and western Louisiana (near Lake Charles, Calcasieu Parish).

3. Nyssa ogeche Marsh. Ogeechee Lime. Sour Tupelo.

Leaves oblong, oval or obovate, acute, rounded or rarely obtuse, and apiculate at apex, gradually or abruptly cuneate or sometimes rounded at base, and entire, covered on the lower surface when they unfold with thick hoary tomentum and on the upper surface with short scattered pale hairs, and at maturity thick and firm, dark green, lustrous and slightly pilose above, pale below, 4′—6′ long and 2′—2½′ wide, with a stout midrib, 9 or 10 pairs of primary veins covered on the lower side with rufous pubescence or often nearly glabrous, and obscure reticulate veinlets; petioles stout, grooved, ½′—1′ in length. Flowers appearing in March and April; staminate in capitate clusters on slender hairy peduncles ½′ long, bibracteolate near the middle, and developed from the axils of the inner scales of the terminal bud, covered with long pale hairs on the outer surface of the short obscurely 5-toothed cup-shaped calyx and on the oblong petals rounded at apex; filaments longer than the petals; anthers oval and conspicuously tuberculate-roughened; pistillate solitary, 1/16′ long, on short stout woolly peduncles from the axils of bud-scales, and furnished at apex with 2 acute hairy bractlets; calyx coated, like the minute rounded spreading petals, with hoary tomentum; stamens included, with short filaments, and small mostly fertile anthers; style stout, exserted, reflexed from near the base. Fruit bright or dull red, on slender tomentose stems enlarged at apex and ½′—⅔′ long, ripening in July and August, and sometimes persistent on the branches until after the falling of the leaves, oblong or obovoid, 1′—1½′ in length, tipped with the thickened and pointed remnants of the style; flesh thick, juicy, very acid; stone oblong, compressed, narrowed at the ends, rounded at base, acute at apex, with walls produced into 10 or 12 broad thin papery white wings, about 1′ long, and 1 or rarely 2-seeded.

A tree, rarely 60°—70° high, with 1 or several stems occasionally 2° in diameter, spreading branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and slender branchlets coated when they first appear with rufous tomentum, light reddish brown or green tinged with red and puberulous during their first summer, turning gray or reddish brown in their first winter, and marked by large lunate or nearly triangular leaf-scars displaying the ends of 3 groups of fibro-vascular bundles; often a shrub, with numerous slender clustered diverging stems. Winter-buds obtuse, ⅛′ long, with ovate apiculate imbricated scales rounded on the back and clothed with thick hoary tomentum, those of the inner ranks becoming at maturity ovate-oblong or obovate, rounded at apex, bright red, and ½′—¾′ long. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, irregularly fissured, with a dark brown surface broken into thick appressed persistent plate-like scales. Wood light, soft, tough, not strong, white, with thin hardly distinguishable sapwood of about 10 layers of annual growth. A preserve with an agreeable subacid flavor, known as Ogeechee limes, is sometimes made from the fruit in Georgia and South Carolina. The flowers abound in nectar, and are much visited by bees.

Distribution. Deep often inundated river swamps or their borders; South Carolina in the neighborhood of the coast, through the valley of the lower Ogeechee River, Georgia; in northern and in western Florida to the mouth of the Choctawhatchee River (_R. H. Harper_), and in the valley of the lower Apalachicola River; rare and local.

4. Nyssa aquatica Marsh. Cotton Gum. Tupelo Gum.