Part 114

A tree, in the forest occasionally 120° high, with a tall straight trunk rarely 4½° in diameter, slender branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and branchlets light green often tinged with purple and pilose with scattered pale hairs when they first appear, light orange color or reddish brown, covered with a slight bloom during their first winter, and marked by numerous conspicuous pale lenticels and by the elevated oval leaf-scars ¼′ long and displaying a circular row of large fibro-vascular bundle-scars, becoming darker in their second and third years; usually smaller, and in open situations rarely more than 50° high, with a short trunk and a broad head of spreading branches. Winter-buds covered by loosely imbricated ovate chestnut-brown scales keeled on the back, slightly apiculate at apex, those of the inner ranks at maturity foliaceous, obovate, acute, gradually narrowed below to a sessile base, many-nerved with dark veins, pubescent on the lower surface, and sometimes 2½′ long and ¾′ wide. Bark of the trunk ¾′—1′ thick, brown tinged with red, and broken on the surface into thick scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, coarse-grained, light brown, with thin nearly white sapwood of 1 or 2 layers of annual growth; largely used for fence-posts, rails, telegraph and telephone poles, and occasionally for furniture and the interior finish of houses.

Distribution. Borders of streams and ponds, and fertile often inundated bottom-lands; valley of the Vermilion River, Illinois, through southern Illinois and Indiana, western Kentucky and Tennessee, southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas; very abundant and probably of its largest size in southern Illinois and Indiana; naturalized through cultivation in southern Arkansas, western Louisiana, and eastern Texas.

Often planted in the prairie region of the Mississippi basin as a timber-tree, and as an ornament of parks and gardens in the eastern states, and now in many other countries with a temperate climate.

3. ENALLAGMA Bail.

Trees, with scaly bark, and stout slightly angled branchlets. Leaves alternate, short-petiolate, persistent. Flowers solitary, or in few-flowered fascicles on long bibracteolate peduncles from the axils of upper leaves or from the sides of the branches; calyx coriaceous, splitting in anthesis into 2 unequal broad divisions, or sometimes slightly 5-lobed, deciduous; corolla inserted under the hypogynous pulvinate fleshy disk, yellow streaked with purple, or dingy purple, tubular-campanulate, more or less ventricose on the lower side by a transverse fold, abruptly dilated into an oblique 2-lipped obscurely 5-lobed laciniately toothed limb; stamens 4, inserted in 2 ranks on the tube of the corolla, in pairs of different lengths, introrse, included or slightly exserted; filaments filiform; anthers oblong, the cells divergent; staminodium solitary, posterior, often 0; ovary sessile, 1-celled, ovate-conic, gradually narrowed into an elongated simple exserted style; stigma terminal, 2-lobed, the lobes stigmatic on their inner face, or entire; ovules in many ranks on 2 thickened 2-lobed lateral parietal placentas. Fruit baccate, oblong or ovoid; indehiscent, umbonate at apex, many-seeded; pericarp thin and brittle; becoming hard, light brown and separable into 2 layers, the inner membranaceous, filled with the united and thickened fleshy viscid placentas attached at base by a cluster of thick fibro-vascular bundles. Seeds imbedded irregularly in the placental mass, compressed, suborbicular, cordate above and below and deeply grooved on the convex faces; embryo filling the seminal cavity, flattened, thick and fleshy, deeply grooved, becoming black in drying; radicle minute, turned toward the lateral hilum.

Enallagma with three or four species is distributed from southern Florida through the Antilles to southern Mexico and Central America.

1. Enallagma cucurbitina Urb. Black Calabash Tree.

_Crescentia cucurbitina_ L.

Leaves crowded near the end of the branches, obovate-oblong or ovate-oblong, contracted into a short broad point or rarely rounded or emarginate at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, and entire, with cartilaginous slightly revolute margins, coriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, paler and yellow-green below, 6′—8′ long and 1½′—4′ wide, with a broad stout midrib deeply impressed on the upper side, conspicuous primary veins arcuate and united near the margins, and reticulate veinlets; unfolding in the spring, and persistent until their second year; petioles thick, covered with glands, and about ¼′ in length. Flowers appearing in April and May and also in autumn, bad-smelling, on thick drooping pedicels solitary in the axils of upper leaves, 1½′—2′ long, furnished below the middle with 2 minute rigid acute bractlets and enlarged at apex into the thick oblique receptacle; calyx light green and slightly glandular at base, splitting nearly to the bottom into 2 ovate pointed lobes nearly as long as the tube of the corolla; corolla thick and leathery, dull purple or creamy white, and marked by narrow purple bands on the lower side, and 2′ long, with a narrow tube creamy white within and slightly contracted above the base, the transverse fold near its apex, the limb erosely cut on the margins and obscurely 2-lipped, the upper lip slightly divided into 2 reflexed lobes, the lower obscurely 3-lobed; stamens inserted near the middle of the tube of the corolla, those of the anterior pair below the others and above the linear staminodium; ovary obliquely conic; stigma 2-lobed. Fruit ovoid or oblong, 3′—4′ long, 1½′—2′ wide, dark green, minutely rugose-punctulate, and marked with 4 obscure longitudinal ridges corresponding with the margins and midrib of the carpellary leaves, raised on the thickened woody disk and pendent on a stout drooping stalk 1½′—2′ long and much enlarged at apex; shell 1/16′ thick, ultimately hard and brittle, lustrous on the outer surface and lined with a thin membranaceous shining light brown coat marked by the broad placental scars; seeds ⅝′ long and broad and ¼′ thick, with a minute lateral hilum just above the basal sinus; seed-coat of 2 layers, the outer thin, dark reddish brown, rugose, and separable from the thick pale felt-like inner layer; cotyledons with 2 ear-like folds near the base, inclosing the radicle in their lower sinus.

A tree, in Florida 18°—20° high, with a trunk 4′—5′ in diameter, long slender drooping branches covered with wart-like excrescences, and stout slightly angled branchlets roughened and somewhat enlarged at the nodes by the thickening of the large crowded cup-shaped persistent woody bases of the leaves, and covered with thin creamy white bark becoming dark or ashy gray in their third year. Winter-buds with linear acute apiculate scales becoming woody, and persistent for one or two years. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, light brown tinged with red, and irregularly divided into large thin scales. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, thin, light brown or orange color, with lighter colored sapwood.

Distribution. Florida, only near the shores of Bay Biscayne on rich hummocks; common on the shores of many of the Antilles, and southward to southern Mexico, the Pacific coast of the Isthmus of Panama, and to Venezuela.

B. Ovary inferior (_partly superior in Caprifoliaceæ_).

LXV. RUBIACEÆ.

Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and opposite simple entire leaves turning black in drying, with stipules. Flowers regular, perfect; calyx-tube adnate to the ovary, its limb 4 or 5-lobed or toothed; corolla 4 or 5-lobed; stamens inserted on the tube of the corolla, as many as and alternate with its lobes; filaments free, or united at base; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; disk epigynous, annular; ovary inferior; style slender; ovules numerous, or 1 in each cell; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit capsular, akene-like, or drupaceous. Seeds with albumen; seed-coat membranaceous.

The Madder family with some three hundred and fifty genera is chiefly tropical, with a few herbaceous genera confined exclusively to temperate regions. To this family belong the Coffee, the Cinchonas, South American trees yielding quinine from their bark, and the plant which produces ipecacuanha, a species of Cephaelis and a native of Brazil, the Gardenia and other plants cultivated for their fragrant flowers.

CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES.

Fruit a capsule; seeds numerous, surrounded by a wing; parts of the flower in 5’s. Calyx 5-lobed, the lobes unequal, sometimes developing into rose-colored leaf-like bodies; filaments free; wing of the seed broad, oblong-ovate, unsymmetric on the sides; leaves deciduous. 1. Pinckneya. Calyx 5-toothed; filaments united into a short tube; wing of the seed narrow, symmetric; leaves persistent. 2. Exostema. Fruit akene-like, 1 or 2-seeded; parts of the flower in 4’s or rarely in 5’s, flowers in pedunculate globose heads; leaves deciduous. 3. Cephalanthus. Fruit drupaceous, with a 4-celled stone; parts of the flower in 4’s; leaves persistent. 4. Guettarda.

1. PINCKNEYA Michx.

A tree, with fibrous roots, scaly light brown bitter bark, resinous scaly buds, stout terete pithy branchlets coated while young with hoary tomentum, becoming glabrous, and marked by scattered minute white lenticels and large nearly orbicular or obcordate leaf-scars displaying a lunate row of numerous crowded fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Leaves complanate in the bud, elliptic to oblong-ovate, acute at apex, cuneate at base, and gradually narrowed into a long stout petiole, thin, coated at first with pale pubescence, and at maturity dark green and puberulous above, paler and puberulous below, especially along the stout midrib and primary veins, deciduous; stipules interpetiolar, conspicuously glandular-punctate at base on the inner face, inclosing the leaf in the bud, triangular, subulate, pink, becoming oblong, acute, scarious, light brown, caducous. Flowers in pedunculate terminal and axillary pubescent trichotomous few-flowered cymes, with linear-lanceolate acute bracts and bractlets at first pink, becoming scarious, deciduous, or sometimes enlarging and rose-colored; flower-buds sulcate, coated with thick pale tomentum; calyx-tube clavate, bracteolate at base, covered with hoary tomentum, not closed in the bud, the limb 5-lobed, with subulate-lanceolate lobes green tinged with pink, scarious, or in the central flower of the ultimate division of the cyme with 1 or rarely with 2 of the lobes produced into oval or ovate acute rose-colored puberulous membranaceous leaf-like bodies, deciduous; corolla salver-form, light yellow, cinereo-tomentose, with a long narrow tube somewhat enlarged in the throat, 5-lobed, the lobes valvate in the bud, oblong, obtuse, marked by red lines and pilose with long white hairs on the inner surface, recurved after anthesis; stamens exserted; filaments filiform, free; anthers oblong, emarginate; ovary 2-celled; style filiform, exserted, slightly enlarged, 2-lobed and stigmatic at apex; ovules numerous, inserted in 2 ranks on a thin 2-lipped placenta longitudinally adnate to the inner face of the cell. Fruit a subglobose obscurely 2-lobed 2-celled capsule, loculicidally 2-valved, the valves thin and papery, light brown, puberulous, especially at the base, faintly rayed, marked by oblong pale spots and by the scars left by the falling of the deciduous calyx-limb and style, sometimes tardily septicidally 2-parted to the middle, persistent on the branches during the winter, the valves finally falling from the woody axis, their outer layer very thin, brittle, separable from the slightly thicker tough woody inner layer. Seeds horizontal, 2-ranked, minute, compressed; seed-coat thin, light brown, reticulate-veined, produced into a broad thin oblong-ovate wing, unsymmetrical on the sides, acute at apex, and longer above than below the seed; embryo elongated, immersed in the thick fleshy albumen; cotyledons ovate-oblong, foliaceous, longer than the terete radicle turned toward the hilum.

The genus is represented by a single species of the southeastern United States.

The generic name is in honor of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746—1825) of South Carolina, the Revolutionary patriot.

1. Pinckneya pubens Michx. Georgia Bark.

Leaves unfolding in March, 5′—8′ long, 3′—4′ wide; petioles ⅔′—1½′ in length. Flowers 1½′ long appearing late in May and early in June, in open clusters 7′—8′ across, their petaloid calyx-lobes sometimes 2½′ long and ½′ wide. Fruit ripening in the autumn 1′ long and ⅔′ wide; seeds with their wings about ½′ long and ⅓′ wide.

A tree, 20°—30° high, with a trunk occasionally 8′—10′ in diameter, slender spreading branches forming usually a narrow round-topped head, and branchlets coated when they first appear with hoary tomentum soon turning light red-brown, pubescent during the summer, and slightly puberulous during their first winter, ultimately becoming glabrous. Winter-buds: terminal ovoid, terete, ½′ long, contracted above the middle into a slender point, and covered by the dark red-brown lanceolate acute stipules of the last pair of leaves of the previous year, often persistent at the base of the growing shoots and marked at the base by 2 broadly ovate pale scar-like slightly pilose elevations; axillary buds obtuse, minute, nearly immersed in the bark. Bark of the trunk about ¼′ thick, with a light brown surface divided into minute appressed scales. Wood close-grained, soft, weak, brown, with lighter-colored sapwood of 8—10 layers of annual growth. The bark has been used in the treatment of intermittent fevers.

Distribution. Low wet sandy swamps on the borders of streams; coast region of South Carolina through southern Georgia and northern Florida to the valley of the lower Apalachicola River; rare and local.

2. EXOSTEMA Rich.

Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, and bitter bark. Leaves sessile or petiolate, persistent; stipules interpetiolar, deciduous. Flowers axillary and solitary or in terminal pedunculate cymes, fragrant, the peduncle bibracteolate above the middle; calyx-tube ovoid, clavate or turbinate, the limb short, 5-lobed, the lobes nearly triangular, persistent; corolla 5-lobed, white, salver-form, the tube long and narrow, erect, the lobes of the limb linear, elongated, spreading, imbricated in the bud; filaments filiform, exserted, united at base into a tube inserted on and adnate to the tube of the corolla; anthers oblong-linear; ovary 2-celled; style elongated, slender, exserted; stigma capitate, simple or minutely 2-lobed; ovules numerous, attached on the 2 sides of a fleshy oblong peltate placenta fixed to the inner face of the cell, ascending. Fruit a many-seeded 2-celled capsule septicidally 2-valved, the valves 2-parted, their outer layer membranaceous, separable from the crustaceous inner layer. Seeds compressed, oblong, imbricated downward on the placenta; seed-coat chestnut-brown, lustrous, produced into a narrow wing; embryo minute, in fleshy albumen; cotyledons flat; radicle terete, inferior.

Exostema with about twenty species is confined to the tropics of America, and is most abundant in the Antilles, one species reaching the shores of southern Florida. The bark contains active tonic properties, and has been used as a febrifuge.

The generic name, from ἔξω and στῆµα, relates to the long exserted stamens.

1. Exostema caribæum R. & S. Prince Wood.

Leaves oblong-ovate to lanceolate, contracted into a slender point and apiculate at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, entire, thick and coriaceous, dark green on the upper surface and yellow-green on the lower surface, 1½′—3′ long and ½′—1¼′ wide, with a prominent orange-colored midrib and conspicuous reticulate veinlets; unfolding in the autumn and in early spring and summer, and persistent for 1 or 2 years; petioles slender, orange-colored, ¼′—½′ in length; stipules nearly triangular, apiculate, with entire dentate or ciliate margins, about 1/16′ long, and in falling marking the branchlets with ring-like scars. Flowers axillary, solitary, appearing from March until June, about 3′ long, on slender pedicels spirally twisted before the flowers open; calyx-tube ovoid; corolla glabrous; filaments united into a short tube. Fruit ⅔′ long, becoming black in drying; seeds oblong, ⅛′ long, with a dark brown papillose coat and a light brown wing.

A glabrous tree, in Florida sometimes 20°—25° high, with a trunk 10′—12′ in diameter, slender erect branches forming a narrow head, and terete branchlets dark green at first, soon becoming dark red-brown and covered with pale lenticels, and in their second year ashy gray and conspicuously marked by the elevated leaf-scars. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, and divided by deep fissures into square smooth pale or nearly white plates. Wood very heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, light brown handsomely streaked with different shades of yellow and brown, with bright yellow sapwood of 12—20 layers of annual growth.

Distribution. Florida, shores of Bay Biscayne and on the Everglade Keys, Dade County, and on the southern keys; abundant on Key West and Upper Metacombe Key; on many of the Antilles, in southern Mexico, and on the west coast of Nicaragua.

3. CEPHALANTHUS L.

Small trees or shrubs, with opposite or verticillate petiolate leaves, interpetiolar stipules, and scaly buds. Flowers nectariferous, yellow or creamy white, sessile in the axils of glandular bracts, in dense globose pedunculate terminal or axillary solitary or panicled heads; receptacle globose, setose; calyx-tube obpyramidal, with a short limb unequally 4 or 5-toothed or lobed; corolla tubular salver-form, divided into 4 or 5 short spreading or reflexed lobes usually furnished with a minute dark gland at the base or on the side of each sinus, puberulous on the inner surface of the tube, the lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens inserted on the throat of the corolla; filaments short; anthers linear-oblong, sagittate, apiculate at base; pistil of 2 carpels; ovary 2-celled; style filiform, elongated; stigma clavate, entire; ovule solitary in each cell, suspended from the apex of the cell on a short papillose funicle, anatropous. Fruit obpyramidal, coriaceous, 2-coccous. Seeds oblong, pendulous, covered at apex by a white spongy aril; embryo straight in cartilaginous albumen; cotyledons oblong, obtuse; radicle elongated, superior.

Cephalanthus with seven species is widely distributed in North and South America, and in southern and eastern Asia, and the Malay Archipelago.

The generic name, from κεφαλή and ἄνθος, relates to the capitate inflorescence.

1. Cephalanthus occidentalis L. Button Bush.

Leaves ovate, lanceolate or elliptic, acute, acuminate or short-pointed at apex, rounded or cuneate at base, thin, dark green on the upper surface, paler and glabrous or puberulous on the lower surface, 2′—7′ long and ½′—3½′ wide, with a stout light yellow midrib often covered below with long white hairs and 5 or 6 pairs of slender primary veins nearly parallel with the sides of the leaf; deciduous, or persistent during the winter; petioles stout, grooved, glabrous, ½′—¾′ in length; stipules minute, nearly triangular. Flowers: flower-heads 1′—1½′ in diameter on slender peduncles 1′—2′ long, usually in panicles 4′—5′ in length, their lower peduncles from the axil of upper leaves; flowers creamy white, very fragrant, opening from the middle of May in Florida and Texas to the middle of August in Canada and on the mountains of California; calyx usually 4 or occasionally 5-lobed, with short rounded lobes, and slightly villose toward the base; corolla glandular or eglandular; anthers nearly sessile, included, discharging their pollen before the flowers open; disk thin and obscure. Fruit ripening late in the autumn in heads ⅝′—¾′ in diameter, green tinged with red and ultimately dark red-brown.

A tree, occasionally 40°—50° high, with a straight tapering trunk a foot in diameter, and frequently free of limbs for 15°—20°, ascending and spreading branches, and stout branchlets with a thick pith, glabrous and marked by large oblong pale lenticels, and developed mostly in verticels of 3’s from the axillary buds of one of the upper nodes, without a terminal bud, light green when they first appear, pale reddish brown, covered with a glaucous bloom during their first winter and then marked by small semicircular leaf-scars displaying semilunate fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and connected by the persistent black stipules or by their subulate scars, darker the following season, and dark brown in their third year, the bark then beginning to separate into the large loose scales found on the large branches and on the stems of small plants; usually a shrub, only a few feet high. Winter-buds axillary, single or in pairs or in 3’s one above the other, minute, nearly immersed in the bark. Bark of large trunks dark gray-brown or often nearly black, divided by deep fissures into broad flat ridges broken on the surface into elongated narrow scales. The bark contains tannin, and has been used in the treatment of fevers and in homœopathic practice.

Distribution. Swamps and the low wet borders of ponds and streams; New Brunswick to Ontario, southern Michigan, southern Minnesota, eastern Nebraska, Kansas and western Oklahoma (near Canton, Blaine County), southward to the shores of Bay Biscayne and the Everglade Keys, Dade County, Florida, eastern Texas to the valley of the Rio Grande, southern New Mexico, and Arizona, and widely distributed in California; in Mexico and Cuba; very rarely arborescent at the north and of its largest size on the margins of river-bottoms and swamps and in pond holes in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas; ascending on the southern Appalachian Mountains to altitudes of 2500°; passing into var. _pubescens_ Rafn., with leaves soft pubescent below especially on the midrib and veins, and pubescent petioles, inflorescence and branchlets; southern Indiana, southeastern Missouri, southern Arkansas, western Louisiana and eastern Texas to the valley of the lower Brazos River.

Occasionally cultivated in the northeastern states as an ornamental plant.

4. GUETTARDA Endl.

Small trees or shrubs, with bitter bark, opposite or rarely verticellate persistent leaves, interpetiolar deciduous stipules, and scaly buds. Flowers sessile or short-pedicellate, with or without bractlets, in axillary forked pedunculate cymes, their bracts and bractlets lanceolate, acute, minute, deciduous; calyx globose, the limb produced above the ovary into an elongated 4—7-lobed tube; corolla salver-shaped, with an elongated cylindric tube naked in the throat, and a 4-lobed limb, the oblong lobes imbricated in the bud; stamens included; filaments free, short; anthers oblong-linear; ovary 4-celled, the cells elongated, tubular; style stout; stigma capitate; ovule solitary, suspended on the thickened funicle from the inner angle of the cell. Fruit a fleshy 1-stoned 2—9-seeded subglobose drupe, with thin flesh, and a bony or ligneous globose 4—9-celled stone obtusely angled or sulcate, the cells narrow and often curved upward. Seed compressed, suspended on the thick funicle closing the orifice of the wall of the stone, straight or excurved; albumen thin and fleshy; embryo elongated, cylindric or compressed; cotyledons flat, minute, not longer than the elongated terete radicle turned toward the hilum.