Part 112

Scabrous-pubescent trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and terete branchlets. Leaves simple, alternate or subverticillate, penniveined, persistent or tardily deciduous, without stipules. Flowers regular, perfect, in terminal or axillary dichotomous often scorpioid-branched cymes; calyx usually 5-lobed, persistent under the fruit; corolla hypogynous, 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens 5, inserted on the tube of the corolla opposite its lobes; filaments filiform; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; pistil of 2 carpels; ovary undivided (in the arborescent genera of the United States), sessile on the hypogynous inconspicuous disk, more or less completely 4-celled; style single, 2-branched or parted toward the apex; stigmas clavate or capitate; ovule solitary in each cell. Fruit drupaceous (in the arborescent genera of the United States), tipped with the remnants of the style, with 2—4 nutlets or cells. Seeds ascending; seed-coat membranaceous.

The Borage family with ninety-five genera, mostly of herbaceous plants, is widely distributed and most abundant in temperate regions, especially in the Mediterranean basin and central Asia.

CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES.

Branches of the style 2-branched; fruit partly or entirely inclosed in the enlarged calyx. 1. Cordia. Branches of the style not branched; fruit not inclosed in the calyx. Calyx valvately splitting into 5 minute teeth; fruit with 2—4 1-seeded nutlets. 2. Beureria. Calyx 5-parted or cleft, the divisions imbricated in the bud; fruit with 2 2-seeded nutlets. 3. Ehretia.

1. CORDIA L.

Trees or shrubs, with petiolate entire persistent leaves and naked buds. Flowers in terminal scorpioid-branched cymes; calyx tubular or campanulate, conspicuously many-ribbed or rayed, the teeth valvate in the bud; corolla funnel form; anthers oblong-ovate; ovary 4-celled; style slender, elongated, 2-branched above the middle, the branches 2-parted, their division stigmatic to the base; ovule ascending, laterally attached below the middle to the inner angle of the cell, suborthotropous; micropyle superior. Fruit entirely or partly inclosed in the thickened calyx; flesh dry and corky or sweet and juicy; stone thick-walled, hard and bony, 1—4-celled, usually 1 or 2-seeded. Seeds without albumen; embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons thick and fleshy or membranaceous, longitudinally plicate or corrugated, much shorter than the superior radicle turned toward the hilum.

Cordia with two hundred and fifty species inhabits the tropical and warm extratropical regions of the two hemispheres, the largest number of species being American. Of the four species found within the territory of the United States two are trees. Some of the species are valuable timber-trees, and others are cultivated for their edible fruits.

The generic name is in honor of Valerius Cordus (1515—1544), the German writer on pharmacy and botany.

CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT SPECIES OF THE UNITED STATES.

Corolla orange or flame color; fruit inclosed in the smooth glabrous thickened ivory-white calyx; leaves ovate. 1. C. Sebestena (D). Corolla white with a yellow centre; fruit entirely or partly inclosed in the thin many-ribbed tomentose orange-brown calyx; leaves oval or oblong-ovate. 2. C. Boissieri (E, H).

1. Cordia Sebestena L. Geiger-tree.

Leaves unfolding through a large part of the year, ovate, short-pointed or rounded at apex, rounded, subcordate, or cuneate at base, entire or remotely and coarsely serrate above the middle, covered when they unfold, like the branches of the inflorescence, the outside of the calyx, and the young branchlets, with thick dense rusty tomentum and with short rigid pale hairs, and at maturity thick and firm, dark green, scabrous-pubescent, or often nearly glabrous below, reticulate-venulose, 5′—6′ long and 3′—4′ wide, with a broad midrib usually covered below with pale hairs, especially in the axils of remote primary veins connected by conspicuous cross veinlets; petioles stout, pubescent, 1′—1½′ in length. Flowers appearing throughout the year on slender pedicels, in open flat cymes 6′—7′ in diameter, some individuals producing flowers with short included stamens and elongated styles, and others with exserted stamens and included styles; calyx tubular, ½′—⅔′ long, and obscurely many-rayed, with short nearly triangular rigid teeth; corolla orange or flame color, puberulous on the outer surface, with a slender tube about twice as long as the calyx and spreading rounded lobes, irregularly undulate on the margins and 1′—1½′ in diameter when fully expanded; ovary conic, glabrous, contracted into a slender style branched near the apex. Fruit broad-ovate, rather abruptly narrowed and pointed at apex, concave at base, 1¼′—1½′ long and about ¾′ broad, inclosed in the thickened fibrous calyx smooth and ivory-white on the outer surface; flesh thin, pale, and corky, separable from the irregularly sulcate thick-walled stone gradually narrowed and acuminate at apex, and deeply lobed at base; seeds linear-lanceolate, ½′ long, with a delicate white seed-coat.

A tree, in Florida 25°—30° high, with a tall trunk 5′—6′ in diameter, slender upright branches forming a narrow close round-topped head, and stout branchlets with thick pith, dark green at first, becoming ashy gray and marked by large nearly orbicular cordate leaf-scars displaying 2 central circular clusters of fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Bark of the trunk ½′—¾′ thick, dark brown, frequently nearly black, and deeply and irregularly divided into narrow ridges broken on the surface into short thick appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, dark brown, with thick light brown or yellow sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, Flamingo near Cape Sable (_A. A. Eaton_) and Madeira Hammock, Munroe County, and on the southern keys; on the Bahama Islands, on most of the Antilles, and in Guiana and New Granada.

Often planted in tropical countries as an ornament of gardens.

2. Cordia Boissieri A. DC. Anacahuita.

Leaves oval to oblong-ovate, acute or rounded at apex, rounded or subcordate at base, entire or obscurely crenulate-serrate, covered when they unfold like the branches of the inflorescence, both surfaces of the calyx and the young branchlets with rusty or dark brown tomentum and short white usually matted hairs, thick and firm, dark green, minutely rugose and more or less scabrous above, coated below with thick soft pale or rufous tomentum, 4′—5′ long and 3′—4′ wide, with a broad midrib, and conspicuous primary veins forked near the margins and connected by cross veinlets; deciduous at the end of their first year; petioles stout, tomentose, 1′—1½′ in length. Flowers opening from April to June, slightly fragrant, sessile or short-pedicellate, in open terminal dichotomous cymes; calyx tubular or subcampanulate, conspicuously many-ribbed, with 5 linear acute teeth, and about half as long as the tube of the white corolla puberulous on the outer surface, marked in the throat by a large light yellow spot, the lobes rounded, imbricated in the bud, and 2′ across when fully expanded; ovary glabrous, gradually narrowed into a slender 2-branched style. Fruit ovoid, 1′ long, about ¾′ broad, pointed at apex, lustrous, bright red-brown, and inclosed entirely or partly by the thin fibrous now conspicuously rayed orange-brown calyx coated on the outer surface with thick short pale tomentum, and often splitting nearly to the base; flesh thin, sweet, and pulpy, separating easily from the ovoid smooth light brown stone gradually narrowed from above the middle, faintly reticulate-veined, and marked by 4 longitudinal lines and at the acuminate apex by a deeply 4-lobed thin cap, thick-walled, hard and bony, deeply lobed at base; seeds ovoid, acute, ¼′ long, with a thin delicate pure white coat.

A tree, occasionally 20°—25° high, with a short often crooked trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, stout spreading branches forming a low round-topped head, and stout branchlets, becoming in their second year dark gray or brown, slightly puberulous, and marked by occasional large lenticels and by elevated obcordate leaf-scars; or often a shrub, with numerous stems sometimes only 2° or 3° tall. Bark of the trunk thin, gray tinged with red, and irregularly divided into broad flat ridges, the surface ultimately separating into long thin papery scales. Wood light, rather soft, close-grained, and dark brown, with thick light brown sapwood.

Distribution. Dry limestone ridges, and depressions in the desert; valley of the Rio Grande, Texas, and southern New Mexico, southward into Mexico; most abundant and of its largest size in Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon between the mouth of the Rio Grande and the base of the Sierra Madre.

2. BEURERIA Jacq.

Trees or shrubs, with oblong-obovate or ovate leaves involute in the bud, persistent. Flowers on slender bracteolate pedicels, in terminal corymbose many-flowered cymes, with linear-lanceolate caducous bracts and bractlets; calyx campanulate, 5-toothed, the divisions closed and valvate in the bud; corolla white, campanulate, the lobes broad-ovate, spreading after anthesis; anthers ovoid, rugulose, apiculate; ovary incompletely 4-celled by the development of the 2 parietal placentas, narrowed into a terminal style 2-parted at apex, the divisions more or less coalescent; stigmas capitate; ovules attached on the back near the middle of the inner face of the revolute placentas, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit subglobose, flesh thin; stone somewhat 4-lobed and separable into 4 thick-walled bony 1-seeded nutlets rounded and furnished on the back with a thick spongy longitudinal many-ridged appendage, flattened on their converging inner faces and attached at apex to a filiform column. Seed terete, filling the seminal cell, longitudinally incurved round a rather small cavity opposite an elevated oblong scar on one of the inner faces of the nutlet and connected with the hilum by a narrow passage; seed-coat membranaceous, light brown; embryo axile in fleshy albumen; cotyledons plane; radicle slender, elongated, turned toward the hilum.

Beureria with forty species is confined to tropical America, two species reaching the shores of southern Florida; of these one is a tree and the other _Beureria revoluta_ H. B. K. is an arborescent shrub.

The generic name is in honor of J. A. Beurer, an apothecary at Nuremberg.

1. Beureria ovata Meyers.

_Beureria havanensis_ Hitch., not Meyers.

Leaves elliptic to oval or broad-obovate, acute and often apiculate or rounded and then occasionally emarginate at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base entire, densely covered when they unfold with white caducous hairs, and at maturity thick, dark yellow-green and lustrous above, paler below, 2½′—3′ long and 1¼′—2′ wide, with slightly thickened undulate margins, a slender, orange-colored midrib, thin primary veins and conspicuous reticulate veinlets more prominent above than below; usually persistent through their second summer; petioles slender, covered when they first appear like the very young branchlets with long white hairs, very soon glabrous, ½′—1′ in length. Flowers opening in spring and late in autumn on pedicels ½′ long and furnished near the middle with an acuminate scarious bractlet ¼′ in length and caducous from a persistent base, in open glabrous 15—20-flowered long-stalked cymes 3′—4′ in diameter, with slender branches, and small bracts; calyx gradually narrowed into a stipe-like base, the lobes acuminate, ciliate on the margins; corolla subcampanulate, creamy white, with a short tube somewhat enlarged in the throat, and broad-ovate spreading lobes ¾′ across when expanded; stamens rather longer than the tube of the corolla, anthers much shorter than the filaments; ovary conic, glabrous, gradually contracted into a slender exserted style divided only toward the apex or sometimes nearly entire, and crowned with 2 capitate stigmas. Fruit ripening in early autumn or early spring from autumnal flowers, bright orange-red, ½′ in diameter, with a thick tough skin and thin dry flesh inclosing the 4 nutlets, the enlarged spreading calyx becoming sometimes ½′ across.

A tree, in Florida occasionally 40°—50° high, with a buttressed and often fluted trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, and slender branchlets light red and pilose with caducous hairs when they first appear, becoming in their first winter dark red, orange color or ashy gray, and sometimes roughened by pale lenticels, their thin bark often separating into delicate scales; usually much smaller and often a shrub, with numerous spreading stems. Winter-buds minute, globose, covered with hoary tomentum, nearly immersed in the bark. Bark of the trunk 1/16′—⅛′ thick, light brown tinged with red, more or less fissured and divided on the surface into thick plate-like irregular scales. Wood hard, strong, very close-grained, brown streaked with orange, with thick hardly distinguishable sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, Cocoanut Grove, Dade County (_Miss O. Rodham_), and on the southern keys; common; on the Bahama Islands and on many of the Antilles.

3. EHRETIA P. Br.

Trees or shrubs, with entire or dentate leaves, and scaly buds. Flowers small, in terminal and axillary scorpioid clusters; calyx open or closed in the bud, the divisions imbricated, ovate or linear; corolla usually white, with a short or cylindric tube and spreading obtuse lobes; ovary oblong-conic, 1-celled before anthesis, becoming incompletely 4-celled by the development of the 2 parietal placentas; style columnar, parted into 2 divisions terminating in capitate stigmas; ovules attached laterally near the middle on the inner face of the revolute placentas, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit fleshy, small, globose, with thin flesh; stone separable into 2 2-celled thick-walled bony nutlets rounded on the back, plane on the inner face, and attached to a thin axile column. Seed terete, usually erect, filling the longitudinally incurved seminal cavity; seed-coat thin, membranaceous, light brown; embryo axile in thin albumen; cotyledons ovate, plane, shorter than the elongated superior radicle turned toward the hilum.

Ehretia with about forty species is widely distributed through tropical and warm extratropical regions of the two hemispheres, with a single species extending into southeastern Texas.

The generic name commemorates the artistic and scientific labors of the German botanical artist, George Dionysius Ehret (1708—1770).

1. Ehretia elliptica DC. Anaqua. Knackaway.

Leaves oval or oblong, pointed and apiculate at apex, gradually rounded or cuneate at base, entire or occasionally furnished above the middle with a few broad teeth, conspicuously reticulate-venulose, unfolding late in winter and then thin, light green, lustrous, minutely tuberculate and pilose above, and covered below like the branches of the inflorescence, the outer surface of the calyx, and the young branchlets with rigid pale hairs, often furnished with axillary tufts of white hairs, and at maturity subcoriaceous, dark green and roughened on the upper surface by the enlarged circular crowded pale tubercles, and more or less covered with soft pale or rufous pubescence on the lower surface, especially on the narrow midrib, and numerous primary veins arcuate near the margins; irregularly deciduous during the winter; petioles stout, grooved, pubescent, ⅛′—¼′ in length. Flowers opening from autumn to early spring, in compact racemose scorpioid-branched panicles 2′—3′ long and broad, on short leafy branches of the year, with linear acute deciduous bracts about ¼′ long; calyx open in the bud, divided to the base into 5 linear acute divisions and nearly as long as the campanulate tube of the corolla, with ovate thin white lobes ½′ across when expanded. Fruit ripening in autumn and spring, light yellow, ¼′ in diameter, with thin sweet rather juicy edible flesh, and 2 2-seeded nutlets.

A tree, sometimes 40°—50° high, with a trunk occasionally 3° in diameter, stout spreading branches forming a handsome compact round-topped head, and slender branchlets, without a terminal bud, covered when they first appear, like the under surface of the leaves, the branches of the inflorescence, and the outer surface of the calyx of the flower, with rigid hirsute pale hairs, becoming in their first winter light brown tinged with red, sometimes puberulous, often roughened by numerous pale lenticels, and by small depressed obcordate leaf-scars displaying a short lunate row of fibro-vascular bundle-scars; usually much smaller within the territory of the United States, and often a low shrub. Winter-buds: axillary, minute, 1 or 2 together, superposed, buried in the bark, and covered by 2 pairs of dark scales persistent on the base of the growing branchlet and at maturity acute, dark chestnut-brown, coated with pale hairs, and sometimes ¼′ in length. Bark of young stems and of the branches thin, light brown, and broken into thick appressed scales, becoming on old trunks sometimes 1′ thick, deeply furrowed and divided into long thick irregular plate-like scales gray or reddish brown on the surface and separating into thin flakes. Wood heavy, hard, not strong, close-grained, difficult to split, light brown, with thick slightly lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. River valleys in fertile soil, or as a shrub on dry barren ridges; valleys of the upper Marcos and of the Guadalupe Rivers, Texas, to the Rio Grande; often extremely common on the bottom-lands, and probably of its largest size in the United States on the Guadalupe and Nueces Rivers sixty or seventy miles from the coast; through Nuevo Leon and Coahuila to the mountains of San Luis Potosí.

Often planted as a shade-tree in the streets of the cities and towns of western Texas and northeastern Mexico.

LXII. VERBENACEÆ.

Trees or shrubs, with opposite simple entire persistent leaves, without stipules. Flowers perfect; calyx 5-toothed or parted, persistent under the fruit; corolla 4 or 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens 4, inserted on the tube of the corolla in pairs of different lengths, anthers 2-celled, introrse, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary sessile on the annular disk; style simple, 2-lobed and stigmatic at apex. Fruit a fleshy drupe or a capsule.

The Verbena family with seventy-eight genera, largely composed of herbaceous plants, is widely scattered through temperate and tropical regions. Some of the species are important timber-trees, the most valuable being the Teak, _Tectoria grandis_ L. f., of southeastern Asia and the Malay Archipelago, and some of the tropical species of Vitex.

CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES.

Flowers in axillary or terminal racemes; staminodium 1; ovary imperfectly 4-celled; fruit a fleshy drupe. 1. Citharexylon. Flowers cymose in pedunculate spikes or heads; staminodium 0; ovary 1-celled; fruit a capsule. 2. Avicennia.

1. CITHAREXYLON L.

Trees or shrubs, with coriaceous lustrous leaves, slightly angled branchlets, without a terminal bud, and with minute axillary buds. Flowers small, on short ebracteolate pedicels, alternate or scattered on the filiform rachis of a slender raceme; calyx membranaceous, tubular-campanulate, truncate, minutely 5-toothed, spreading and cup-shaped under the fruit; corolla salver-form, usually white, the spreading limb somewhat oblique, 5-lobed, the lobes broad-ovate, rounded, slightly unequal, the 2 posterior exterior, sometimes reduced to staminodia; stamens included; filaments short, filiform, slightly thickened at base, the 2 anterior filaments longer than the others; anthers oblong; staminodium 1, posterior, linear, acute, rarely fertile; ovary ovoid, incompletely 4-celled by the development of two parietal placentas, gradually narrowed into a short included style; ovule solitary in each cell, erect, attached laterally near the base, ascending, anatropous; micropyle inferior. Fruit a 2-stoned 4-seeded fleshy drupe tipped with the remnants of the style, with thin flesh and a thick-walled bony stone separable into 2 2-seeded compressed smooth light brown nutlets rounded on the back and concave on the inner face. Seed erect, without albumen, filling the seminal cavity; seed-coat membranaceous, light brown; embryo subterete, straight; cotyledons thick and fleshy, oblong, much longer than the short inferior radicle turned toward the oblong basal hilum.

Citharexylon with about twenty species is confined to tropical America, where it is distributed from southern Florida through the West Indies to southern Mexico, Lower California, Bolivia, and Brazil.

The generic name, from κιθάρα and ξύλον, is a translation of the English West Indian name Fiddle Wood, a corruption of the earlier French-colonial Bois Fidèle, in allusion to the strength and toughness of the wood of the trees of this genus.

1. Citharexylon fruticosum L. Fiddle Wood.

_Citharexylon villosum_ Jacq.

Leaves oblong-obovate to oblong, acute, acuminate, rounded or emarginate at apex, and gradually narrowed at base, with thickened slightly revolute margins, and glabrous or coated with short pubescence (var. _villosum_ Schulz); conspicuously reticulate-venulose, pale green, 3′—4′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, with a broad pale midrib rounded on the upper side and remote prominent arcuate veins; petioles stout, grooved, ⅔′ in length, separating in falling from an elevated nearly circular persistent woody base. Flowers fragrant, appearing throughout the year on slender pedicels from the axils of scarious pubescent bracts, in drooping axillary pubescent racemes crowded near the end of the branches and 2′—4′ long; calyx coated with pale hairs, or sometimes nearly glabrous; corolla ⅛′ across the expanded lobes of the limb, and covered on the inner surface of the tube with pale hairs; staminodium minute. Fruit subglobose to oblong-ovoid, light red-brown, very lustrous, ⅓′ in diameter, with thin sweet rather juicy flesh, and inclosed nearly to the middle in the cup-like pale brown slightly and irregularly lobed or sometimes nearly entire calyx; seeds oblong, narrowed at the rounded ends, about ⅛′ long.

A tree, in Florida rarely more than 30° high, with a trunk 4′—7′ in diameter, slender upright branches forming a narrow irregularly shaped head, and slender slightly many-angled branchlets light yellow and covered with pale simple caducous hairs or pubescent when they first appear, becoming in their second year terete and ashy gray; or often a shrub, with numerous low stems. Winter-buds globose, nearly immersed in the bark, and covered with hoary pubescence. Bark of the trunk 1/16′—⅛′ thick, light brown tinged with red, the surface separating into minute appressed scales. Wood heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, clear bright red, with thin lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, Cape Canaveral to the southern keys; common and of its largest size in the United States on the shores of Bay Biscayne near the mouth of the Miami River, Dade County; northward usually a low shrub; on the Bahama Islands and on many of the Antilles.

2. AVICENNIA L.