Leaves coriaceous, lanceolate to oblong, acute at apex, gradually narrowed to the cuneate base, finely or remotely crenately serrate, usually above the middle only, dark green, smooth and lustrous, 4′—5′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, persistent; finally turning scarlet and dropping irregularly through the year; petioles stout, wing-margined toward the apex, channeled, about ½′ in length. Flowers pungently fragrant, about 2½′ in diameter, expanding in July and continuing to open successively during two or three months, on stout red pedicels thickening from below upward, 2½′—3′ long, and usually furnished with 3 or 4 ovate minute subfloral bractlets; sepals ovate to oval, ½′ long, ciliate on the margins with long white hairs, and covered on the outer surface with dense velvety pale lustrous pubescence; petals rounded at apex, gradually contracted at base, silky-puberulent on the back, white, incurved, 1¼′—1½′ long and 1′ broad, stamens united into a shallow fleshy deeply 5-lobed cup pubescent on the inner surface and adnate to the base of the petals; ovary ovoid, pubescent, gradually contracted into the stout style persistent on the fruit. Fruit ovoid, acute, pubescent, ¾′ long, and ½′ in diameter, splitting to below the middle; seeds winged, nearly square, slightly concave on the inner surface and rounded on the outer surface, rugose, dotted with small pale brown excrescences, nearly 1/16′ long and half the length of the thin membranaceous oblique pale brown wing pointed or rounded at apex; embryo filling the cavity of the seed, nearly straight; cotyledons subcordate, foliaceous.
A short-lived tree, 60°—75° high, with a tall straight trunk 18′—20′ in diameter, small branches growing upward at first and ultimately spreading into a narrow compact head, and dark brown rugose branchlets marked during several years by the horizontal slightly obcordate leaf-scars; or rarely a low shrub. Winter-buds ¼′—⅓′ long, and covered with pale silky lustrous pubescence. Bark of the trunk nearly 1′ thick, deeply divided into regular parallel rounded ridges, their dark red-brown scaly surface broken into many irregular shallow furrows. Wood light, soft, close-grained, not durable, light red, with lighter colored sapwood of 40—50 layers of annual growth; occasionally used in cabinet-making.
Distribution. Shallow swamps and moist depressions in Pine-barrens; southeastern Virginia southward near the coast to the shores of Indian River on the east coast and to Cape Romano on the west coast of Florida, ranging to the interior of the peninsula from Lake to De Soto Counties, and westward along the Gulf coast to southern Mississippi; most abundant in Georgia and east Florida; gradually becoming less abundant westward.
Leaves obovate-oblong, rounded or pointed at apex, gradually narrowed to the long cuneate base, remotely serrate, usually above the middle only, with small glandular teeth, bright green and lustrous on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, 5′—6′ long and 1½′—2′ wide; turning scarlet in the autumn before falling; petioles stout, wing-margined above, ¼′—½′ in length. Flowers 3′—3½′ in diameter, appearing about the middle of September, on short stout pedicels at first pubescent, finally glabrous, from the axils of crowded upper leaves, and marked by the broad conspicuous scars of 2 minute lateral subfloral pubescent bractlets; sepals nearly circular, ½′ in diameter, ciliate on the margins, and covered on the outer surface with short lustrous silky pale hairs; petals obovate, crenulate, white, membranaceous, 1′—1½′ long and 1′ broad, and densely coated on the outer surface with fine pubescence; filaments distinct, inserted on the petals; ovary conspicuously ridged, pubescent, truncate, and crowned with a slender deciduous style nearly as long as the stamens. Fruit globose, slightly pubescent, ¾′ in diameter, the valves splitting nearly to the middle and septicidally from the base to the middle; seeds 6—8, or by abortion fewer in each cell, closely packed together on the whole length of the thick axile placenta, nearly ½′ long, angled by mutual pressure, without wings.
A tree, 15°—20° high, with stout slightly angled dark red-brown branchlets covered with small pale oblong horizontal lenticels, and conspicuously marked by large prominent obcordate leaf-scars, with a marginal row of large fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds compressed, reddish brown, puberulous, ¼′—⅓′ long. Bark of cultivated plants smooth, thin, dark brown.
Distribution. Near Fort Barrington on the Altamaha River, Georgia; not seen in a wild state since 1790, and now only known by cultivated plants.
Often cultivated in the eastern states and hardy as far north as eastern New York and occasionally in eastern Massachusetts, and rarely in western and central Europe.
Trees, with pungent aromatic bark, and alternate pellucid-punctate entire penniveined persistent leaves, without stipules. Flowers perfect, regular, cymose; sepals and petals imbricated in the bud; stamens numerous, hypogynous, with filaments united into a tube inclosing the pistil, and narrow extrorse anthers adnate to the tube and longitudinally 2-celled; pistil of 2—3 united carpels; ovary free, 1-celled, with 2—5 parietal placentas; styles thick; stigmas 2—5-lobed; ovules 2 or many. Fruit a berry; seeds 2 or several; seed-coat thick, crustaceous; embryo small in fleshy oily albumen.
The Wild Cinnamon family with five genera and a few species is confined to tropical America, south Africa and Madagascar, one species reaching the shores of southern Florida.
A tree, with scaly bark, stout ashy gray branchlets conspicuously marked by large orbicular leaf-scars, and minute buds. Leaves obovate, rounded or slightly emarginate at apex, gradually narrowed to the cuneate base, petiolate, coriaceous. Flowers small, in many-flowered subcorymbose terminal or subterminal panicles of several dichotomously branched cymes from the axils of upper leaves or from minute caducous bracts; sepals 3, suborbicular, concave, coriaceous, erect, their margins ciliate, persistent; petals 5, hypogynous, in a single row on the slightly convex receptacle, oblong, concave, rounded at apex, fleshy, twice as long as the sepals, white or rose color; stamens about 20, staminal tube crenulate at the summit and slightly extended above the anthers; ovary cylindric or oblong-conic, 1-celled, with 2 parietal placentas; style short, fleshy, terminating in a 2 or 3-lobed stigma; ovules numerous, arcuate, horizontal or descending, attached by a short funicle, imperfectly anatropous; micropyle superior. Fruit globose or slightly ovoid, fleshy, minutely pointed with the base of the persistent style, 2—4-seeded. Seeds reniform, suspended; seed-coat black and shining; embryo curved in the copious albumen; cotyledons oblong; radicle next the hilum.
The genus consists of a single West Indian species, extending into southern Florida and to Venezuela.
The generic name is from canella, the diminutive of the Latin cana or canna, a cane or reed, first applied to the bark of some Old World tree from the form of a roll or quill which it assumed in drying.
Leaves contracted into a short stout grooved petiole, 3½′—5′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, bright green and lustrous. Flowers about ⅛′ in diameter, opening in the autumn. Fruit ripening in March and April, bright crimson, soft and fleshy, ½′ in diameter; seeds about 3/16′ long.
A tree, in Florida 25°—30° high, with a straight trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, and slender horizontal spreading branches forming a compact round-headed top. Bark of the trunk ⅛′ thick, light gray, broken on the surface into numerous short thick scales rarely more than 2′—3′ long and about twice as thick as the pale yellow aromatic inner bark. Wood very heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, close-grained, dark red-brown, with thick light brown or yellow sapwood of 25—30 layers of annual growth. The bitter acrid inner bark is the wild cinnamon bark of commerce. It has a pleasant cinnamon-like odor and is an aromatic stimulant and tonic.
Distribution. Florida, region of Cape Sable, Munroe County (Flamingo [A. A. Eaton], East Cape, Madeira Hammock), and widely distributed on the southern keys, usually growing in the shade of other trees; on the Bahama Islands and many of the Antilles.
An intricately branched almost leafless tree or shrub, with thin red-brown scaly bark, stout alternate glabrous branchlets covered with pale green bark and terminating in a sharp rigid straight or slightly curved spine. Leaves minute, early deciduous, alternate, narrow-obovate, rounded at apex. Flowers perfect, on slender club-shaped puberulous pedicels from the axils of minute scarious deciduous bracts, in short umbel-like racemes below the end of the branches; calyx of 3 or 5 minute sepals imbricated in the bud, deciduous; petals 4, convolute in the bud, hypogynous, obovate or oblong, subunguiculate, white, much longer than the sepals; disk 0; stamens 8, free, hypogynous, as long as the petals; filaments thickened in the middle, subulate at the ends; anthers oval, attached on the back near the base, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary ovoid, 2-celled, contracted at base into a short stalk and above into a simple subulate style; stigma terminal, obtuse, slightly emarginate; ovules numerous, adnate in several series to the fleshy placenta, horizontal or dependent, anatropous. Fruit a 2-celled berry, black at maturity, subglobose, tipped with the remnants of the pointed style; flesh thin and succulent, the cells 1 or 2-seeded by abortion. Seed vertical, circinate-cochleate; seed-coat crustaceous, slightly rugose, striate; albumen thin; embryo annular; cotyledons semiterete; the radicle ascending.
The family is represented by a single genus.
Characters of the family.
Kœberlinia with one species is North American.
The generic name is in honor of L. Koeberlin, a German botanist.
Leaves not more than ⅛′ long. Flowers appearing in May and June, about ¼′ in diameter. Fruit 3/16′—¼′ in diameter.
A bushy tree, rarely 20°—25° high, with a short stout trunk sometimes 6°—8° long and a foot in diameter; more often a low branching shrub forming impenetrable thickets often of considerable extent. Wood very hard, heavy, close-grained, dark brown somewhat streaked with orange, becoming almost black on exposure, with thin yellow or nearly white sapwood of 12—15 layers of annual growth.
Distribution. Dry gravelly mesas and foothills; valleys of the upper Colorado River (Big Springs, Howard County), and of the lower Rio Grande, Texas, westward through southern Texas and New Mexico to southern Arizona, and southward through northern Mexico, and in Lower California (San Jorge).
Trees or shrubs, with bitter milky juice, and alternate long-petiolate persistent simple or digitately compound leaves, without stipules. Flowers unisexual or perfect, the perianth of the male and female flowers dissimilar; stamens in two series, inserted on the corolla; filaments free; anthers introrse. Fruit baccate.
The Pawpaw family with two genera is tropical American and Mexican, a single representative of the family reaching the shores of southern Florida.
Short-lived trees, with erect simple or rarely branched stems composed of a thin shell of soft fibrous wood surrounding a large central cavity divided by thin soft cross partitions at the nodes, and covered with thin green or gray bark marked by the ring-like scars of fallen leaf-stalks, and stout soft fleshy roots. Leaves simple, palmately lobed or digitate, crowded toward the top of the stem and branches, large, flaccid, subpeltately palmately nerved, and usually deeply and often compoundly lobed. Flowers regular, monœcious or polygamo-diœcious, white, yellow, or greenish white, in axillary cymose panicles, the staminate elongated, pedunculate, and many-flowered, the pistillate abbreviated and few or usually 3-flowered, generally unisexual and diœcious, occasionally polygamo-diœcious, each flower in the axil of a minute ovate acute bract; calyx minute, 5-lobed, the lobes alternate with the petals; corolla of the staminate flower salverform, gamopetalous, the tube elongated, 5-lobed, the lobes oblong or linear, contorted in the bud; stamens 10; filaments free, those of the outer row alternate with the lobes of the corolla and elongated, the others alternate with them and abbreviated; anthers 2-celled, erect, opening longitudinally, often surmounted by their slightly elongated connective; ovary rudimentary, subulate; pistillate flower, calyx minute, 5-lobed, persistent under the fruit; corolla polypetalous, petals 5, linear-oblong, erect, ultimately spreading above the middle, deciduous; ovary free, sessile, 1-celled or more or less spuriously 5-celled; style 0 or abbreviated; stigmas 5, linear, radiating, dilated and subpalmately lobed at apex; ovules indefinite, inserted in two rows on the placenta, anatropous, long-stalked; micropyle superior; raphe ventral; hermaphrodite flower, corolla gamopetalous, tubular-campanulate, the lobes erect and spreading or subreflexed; stamens 10, in 2 ranks, or 5; ovary obovoid-oblong, longer than the tube of the corolla, more or less spuriously 5-celled below. Fruit slightly 5-lobed, l-celled or more or less completely 5-celled, filled with soft pulp, many-seeded, that produced from the hermaphrodite flower long-stalked, pendulous, usually unsymmetric, gibbous, and smaller than that from the pistillate flower. Seeds ovoid, inclosed in membranaceous silvery white sac-like arils, occasionally germinating within the fruit; seed-coat crustaceous, closely investing the membranaceous inner coat, the outer coat becoming thick, rugose, succulent, and ultimately dry and leathery; embryo in the axis of fleshy albumen; cotyledons ovate, foliaceous, compressed, longer than the terete radicle turned toward the minute pale subbasilar hilum.
Carica with about twenty species is distributed from southern Florida through the West Indies to southern Brazil and Argentina, and from southern Mexico to Chile. One species grows probably indigenously in Florida. The milky juice of Carica contains papain, which has the power of digesting albuminous substances, and the leaves are often used in tropical countries to make meat tender.
The generic name is formed from the Carib name of one of the species.
Leaves ovate or orbicular, deeply parted into 5—7 lobes divided more or less deeply into acute lateral lobes, these secondary divisions entire or rarely lobed, the lowest lobes forming a deep basal sinus, thin, flaccid, yellow-green, 15′—24′ in diameter, with broad flat yellow or orange-colored primary veins radiating from the end of the petiole through the lobes, and small secondary veins extending to the point of the lateral lobes and connected by conspicuous reticulate veinlets; petioles stout, yellow, hollow, enlarged and cordate at base, sometimes becoming 3°—4° in length before the leaves fall. Flowers often beginning to appear on plants only 3° or 4° high and a few months old, produced continuously throughout the year, the staminate in clusters on slender spreading or pendulous peduncles 4′—12′ long, the pistillate in 1—3-flowered short-stalked cymes; staminate flowers fragrant, filled with nectar, their corolla ¾′—1¼′ long, with a slender tube and acute lobes; anthers oblong, orange-colored, surmounted by the rounded thickened end of the connective, those of the inner row almost sessile and one third larger than those of the outer row, shorter than their flattened filaments covered, like the connectives, with long slender white hairs; pistillate flowers about 1′ long, with erect petals, without staminodia; ovary ovoid, ivory-white, slightly and obtusely 5-angled, 1-celled, and narrowed into a short slender style crowned by a pale green stigma divided to the base into 5 radiating lobes dilated and 3-nerved at apex. Fruits hanging close together against the stem at the base of the leaf-stalk, obovoid to ellipsoid, and obtusely short-pointed, yellowish green to bright orange color; in southern Florida not more than 4′ long and 3′ thick, and usually smaller, with a thick skin closely adherent to the sweet insipid flesh forming a thin layer outside the central cavity; seeds full and rounded, about 3/16′ long; outer portion of the seed-coat rugose at first when the fruit is fully grown but still green, ivory-white, very succulent, and usually separable from the smooth paler chestnut-brown lustrous interior portion, the outer part turning black as the fruit ripens and becoming adherent to the inner portion closely investing the thin lustrous light red-brown inner coat.
A short-lived tree, in Florida attaining a height of 12°—15°, with a trunk seldom more than 6′ in diameter; in the West Indies and other tropical countries often twice as large, with a trunk occasionally dividing into a number of stout upright branches. Bark thin, light green, becoming gray toward the base of the stem.
Distribution. Florida from the southern shores of Bay Biscayne on the west coast and of Indian River on the east coast to the southern keys, growing sparingly in rich hummocks; common in all the West Indian islands, in southern Mexico, and in the tropical countries of South America; now naturalized in most of the warm regions of the world, where it is universally cultivated for its fruit, which is considered one of the most wholesome of all tropical fruits, and has been much improved by selection.
Succulent trees or shrubs, with copious watery juice, numerous spines springing from cushions of small bristles (areolæ), and minute caducous alternate leaves, or leafless. Flowers large and showy, perfect, usually solitary; calyx of numerous spirally imbricated sepals forming a tube, those of the inner series petal-like; corolla of numerous imbricated petals, in many series; stamens inserted on the tube of the calyx, very numerous, in several series, with slender filaments and introrse 2-celled oblong anthers, the cells opening longitudinally; pistil of several united carpels; ovary 1-celled, with several parietal placentas; styles united, terminal; stigmas as many as the placentas; ovules numerous, horizontal, anatropous. Fruit a fleshy berry. Seeds numerous, with albumen; cotyledons foliaceous; radicle turned toward the hilum.
The Cactus family with twenty genera and a very large number of species is most abundant in the dry region adjacent to the boundary of the United States and Mexico, with a few species ranging northward to the northern United States and southward to the West Indian islands, Brazil, Peru, Chile and the Galapagos Islands. Two of the genera have arborescent representatives in the flora of the United States.
Trees or shrubs, with columnar ribbed stems, and buds on the back of the ridges from the axils of latent leaves, geminate, superposed, the upper producing a branch or flower, the lower arrested and developed into a cluster of spines surrounded by an elevated cushion or areola of chaffy tomentose scales. Flowers lateral, elongated, the calyx-lobes forming an elongated tube, those of the outer ranks adnate to the ovary, scale-like, only their tips free, those of the inner ranks free, elongated; petals cohering by their base with the top of the calyx-tube, larger than its interior lobes, spreading, recurved; stamens numerous; filaments adnate by their base to the tube of the calyx, those of the interior ranks free, the exterior united into a tube; style filiform, divided into numerous radiating linear branches stigmatic on the inner face; stalks of the ovules long and slender, becoming thick and juicy in the fruit. Seeds with very thin albumen; embryo straight; cotyledons abbreviated, hooked at apex; radicle conic.
Cereus with at least two hundred species inhabits the dry southwestern region of North America, the West Indies, tropical South America, and the Galapagos Islands. Of the numerous species found within the territory of the United States only one assumes the habit and size of a tree. The fruit of several species is edible, and the ribs of the durable woody frames of the stems of the large arborescent species are used for the rafters of houses and for fuel. Many of the species are planted in warm dry countries in hedges to protect cultivated fields, and others are popular garden plants valued for their beautiful flowers, which are sometimes nocturnal and exceedingly fragrant.
The generic name relates to the candle-like form of the stem of some of the species.
Leaves 0. Flowers 4′—4½′ long and 2½′ wide, opening from May to July in great numbers near the top of the stem, each surrounded on the lower side by the radial spines of the cluster below it; ovary ovoid, 1′ long, rather shorter than the stout tube of the flower, and covered, like the base of the tube, by the thick imbricated green outer scale-like sepals, with small free triangular acute scarious mucronate tips, furnished in their axils with short tufts of rufous hairs and occasionally with clusters of chartaceous spines, gradually passing into thin oblong-ovate or obovate larger sepals, mucronate or rounded at apex and closely imbricated in many ranks; petals 25—35, obovate-spatulate, obtuse, entire, thick and fleshy, creamy white, ⅔′ long and much reflexed after anthesis; stamens, with linear anthers emarginate at the ends, and filaments united for half their length to the walls of the calyx-tube, those of the exterior rows joined below into a long tube, surrounding the stout columnar style glandular at base and divided at apex into 12—15 green stigmas. Fruit ripening in August, ovoid or slightly obovoid, 2½′ long and 1⅓′ wide, truncate and covered at apex by the depressed pale scar left by the falling of the flower, light red at maturity, separating into 3 or 4 fleshy valves bright red on their inner surface and inclosing the bright scarlet juicy mass of the enlarged funiculi and innumerable seeds; seeds obovoid, rounded, ⅙′ long, lustrous, dark chestnut-brown.
A tree, 50°—60° high, with a trunk sometimes 2° in diameter, thickest below the middle and tapering gradually toward the ends, marked by transverse superficial lines into rings 4′—8′ long, representing the amount of annual longitudinal growth, 8—12-ribbed at base with obtuse ribs 4′—5′ broad, and at summit 18—20-ribbed with obtuse deep compressed ribs, branchless or furnished above the middle with a few, usually 2 or 3, stout alternate or sometimes opposite upright branches shorter but otherwise resembling the principal stem composed of a thick tough green epidermis, a fleshy covering 3′—6′ thick saturated with bitter juice, and a circle of bundles of woody fibres making, with annual layers of exogenous growth, dense tough elastic columns placed opposite the depressions between the ribs, ½′—3′ in diameter and frequently united by branches growing at irregular intervals between them, the woody frame remaining standing after the death of the plant and the decomposition of its fleshy covering. Areolæ pale, elevated, about ½′ in diameter, bearing clusters of stout straight spines with a large dark fulvous base, sulcate or angled, tinged with red, with thick stout spines in the centre of each cluster, the 4 basal horizontal or slightly inclined downward, the lowest being the longest and stoutest and sometimes 1½′ long and 1/12′ thick, the upper shorter, more slender and slightly turned upward, with a row of shorter and thinner radial spines 12—16 in number surrounding the central group. Wood of the columns strong, very light, rather coarse-grained, with numerous conspicuous medullary rays, and light brown tinged with yellow; almost indestructible in contact with the ground, little affected by the atmosphere and largely used for the rafters of houses, for fences, and by Indians for lances, bows, etc. The fruit is consumed in large quantities by Indians.
Distribution. Low rocky hills and dry mesas of the desert; valley of Bill Williams River through central and southern Arizona to the valley of the San Pedro River and to the eastern border of the Colorado Desert between the Needles and Yuma, Yuma County, Arizona, and southward in Sonora.
Trees or usually shrubs, in the arborescent species of the United States with subcylindric or clavate articulate tuberculate branches, covered with small sunken stomata, and containing tubular reticulated woody skeletons, and thick fleshy or fibrous roots. Leaves scale-like, terete, subulate, caducous, bearing in their axils oblong or circular cushion-like areolæ of chaffy or woolly scales terminal on the branches and furnished above the middle with many short slender slightly attached sharp barbed bristles and toward the base with numerous stout barbed spines surrounded in some species, except at apex, by loose papery sheaths. Flowers diurnal, lateral, produced from areolæ on branches of the previous year between the bristles and spines, sessile, cup-shaped; sepals flat, erect, deciduous; corolla rotate; petals obovate, united at base, spreading; stamens shorter than the petals; filaments free or slightly united below; anthers oblong; style cylindric, longer than the stamens, obclavate below, divided at apex into 3—8 elongated or lobulate lobes stigmatic on the inner face. Fruit sometimes proliferous, covered by a thick skin, succulent and often edible, or dry, pyriform, globose or ellipsoid, concave at apex, surmounted by the marcescent tube of the flower, tuberculate, areolate, or rarely glabrous, truncate at base, with a broad umbilicus at apex. Seeds immersed in the pulpy placentas, compressed, discoid, often margined with a bony raphe; testa pale, bony, sometimes marked by a narrow darker marginal commissure; embryo coiled around the copious or scanty albumen; cotyledons large; radicle thin, obtuse.
Opuntia with many species is distributed from southern New England southward in the neighborhood of the coast to the West Indies, and through western North America to Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, the largest number of species occurring near the boundary of the United States and Mexico. Of the species of the United States at least three attain the size and habit of small trees. Cochineal is derived from a scale-insect which feeds on the juices of some of the Mexican species, and the fruit of several species is refreshing and is consumed in considerable quantities in semitropical countries. The large-growing species with flat branches are employed in many countries to form hedges for the protection of gardens and fields; and the branches saturated with watery juice are sometimes stripped of their spines and bristles and fed to cattle.
Opuntia is the classical name of some plant which grew in the neighborhood of the city of Opus in Bœotia.
Leaves light green, gradually narrowed to the acuminate apex, ½′—1′ long. Flowers appearing from June to September, the earliest from tubercles at the end of the branches of the previous year, the others from the terminal tubercles of the immature fruit developed from the earliest flowers of the season, 1′ in diameter when fully expanded, with ovaries nearly 1′ long, 8—10 obtuse crenulate sepals, 5 erect stigmas, and 8 light pink petals, those of the outer ranks cuneate, retuse, crenulate on the margins, shorter than the lanceolate acute petals of the inner ranks, the whole strongly reflexed at maturity. Fruit proliferous, oval, rounded, 1′—1¼′ long and nearly as broad, more or less tuberculate, conspicuously marked by large pale tomentose areolæ bearing numerous small bristles, usually spineless or occasionally armed with small weak spines, hanging in pendulous clusters usually of 6 or 7 and occasionally of 40—50 fruits in a cluster, one growing from the other in continuous succession, the first the largest and containing perfect seeds, the others frequently sterile, dull green when fully ripe, with dry flesh, falling usually during the first winter or occasionally persistent on the branches during the second season, and then developing flowers from the tubercles; seeds compressed, thin, very angular, 1/12′—⅙′ in diameter.
A tree, with a more or less flexuous trunk occasionally 12° in height and sometimes a foot in diameter, a symmetric head of stout wide-spreading branches and thick pendulous joints sometimes almost hidden by the long conspicuous spines and beginning to develop their woody skeletons during their second or occasionally during their third season, the terminal or ultimate joints ovoid or ovoid-cylindric, tumid, crowded at the end of the limbs, pale olive color, 3′—8′ long, often 2′ in diameter, with broad ovoid-oblong tubercles, ½′—¾′ in length. Areolæ of pale straw-colored tomentum and short slender pale bristles, each areola bearing at first 5—15 stout stellate-spreading light yellow spines of nearly equal length, ¾′-1′ long and inclosed in loose lustrous sheaths, additional spines developing in succeeding years at the upper margin of the areolæ, the tubercles of old branches being sometimes furnished with from 40-60 spines persistent on the branches for 4-6 years. Bark of the trunk and of the large limbs about ¼′ thick, separating freely on the surface into large thin loosely attached scales varying in color from brown to nearly black on the largest stems, and unarmed, the spines mostly falling with the outer layers from branches 3′—4′ thick. Wood of old trunks light, hard, pale yellow, with broad conspicuous medullary rays, well marked layers of annual growth, and a thick pith.
Distribution. Plains of Arizona south of the Colorado plateau, and in the adjacent region of Sonora; not rare; apparently most abundant and of its largest size in the United States on the mesas near Tucson, Pima County, at altitudes between 2000° and 3000°.
Leaves terete, tapering gradually to the setulose apex, about ¼′ long, remaining on the branches from four to six weeks. Flowers opening in April and May and remaining open for two or three days, 2′—2½′ in diameter, with ovaries about 1′ long, obovate sepals, broad-obovate dark purple petals, sensitive red stamens, and a 6—9-parted stigma. Fruits clustered at the end of the branches of the previous year, persistent during the winter and occasionally during the following summer and then sometimes proliferous, oval or rarely globose or hemispheric, frequently 2′ long and 1½′ thick, with yellow acrid flesh and 20—30 tubercles very prominent during the summer, nearly disappearing as the fruit ripens and enlarges, leaving it marked only by the small oval areolæ covered with short bristles, and bearing numerous slender spines deciduous in December as the fruit begins to turn yellow; seeds nearly orbicular, slightly or not at all beaked, ⅙′—⅕′ in diameter, and marked by linear conspicuous commissures.
A tree, with an erect trunk occasionally 10° high and 5′-10′ in diameter, numerous stout spreading limbs forming an open irregular head, and branches with joints 4′—12′ long and ¾′—1′ thick, covered with a thick epidermis varying from green to purple, and usually developing woody skeletons during their second season, their tubercles prominent, compressed, ovoid, ⅓′—½′ long. Areolæ oval, clothed with pale tomentum and short light brown bristles, their spines 5—15 on the tubercles of young joints and 30—50 on those of older branches, and slender, white to light reddish brown, closely invested in white glistening sheaths, stellate-spreading, ½′—¾′ long, those in the interior sometimes considerably longer than the radial spines. Bark of the trunk and of the larger limbs about ¼′ thick, spineless, nearly black, broken into elongated ridges, and finally much roughened by numerous closely appressed scales. Wood light, soft, pale reddish brown, and conspicuously reticulate, with conspicuous medullary rays and well defined layers of annual growth; sometimes used in the manufacture of light furniture, canes, picture-frames, and other small articles.
Distribution. Widely scattered over the mesas of southern Arizona south of the Colorado plateau and of the adjacent regions of Sonora.
Leaves terete, abruptly narrowed to the spinescent apex, ⅓′—½′ long, persistent on the branches from four to six weeks. Flowers opening in May, about 1½′ in diameter, with ovaries ⅝′ long, broad-ovate acute sepals, and narrow obovate petals rounded above and green tinged with red or with yellow. Fruit usually clavate, 2′—2½′ long, nearly 1½′ in diameter, with areolæ generally only above the middle and usually furnished with 1—3 slender reflexed persistent spines about ½′ long, or occasionally spineless, rarely nearly spherical and only about ¾′ in diameter, ripening from December to February, and at maturity the same color as the joint on which it grows, usually withering, drying, and splitting open on the tree, or remaining fleshy and persistent on the branches until the end of the following summer, and sometimes through a second winter, or often becoming imbedded in the end of a more or less elongated joint; seeds irregularly angled, with narrow commissures.
A tree, with an erect trunk occasionally 6°—8° high and 8′ in diameter, numerous stout irregularly spreading or often upright branches, and cylindric terminal joints generally 6′—12′ but sometimes 2° in length, ¾′—1′ in diameter, and covered with a thick dark green or purple epidermis, marked by linear flattened tubercles, their woody skeletons usually formed during their second season. Areolæ large, oval, clothed with gray wool, generally bearing a cluster of small bristles, and slender stellate-spreading brown or reddish brown spines, with close early deciduous straw-colored sheaths, 4—14 and on old tubercles 20—25 in number, the inner 1—4 in number, usually deflexed and unequal in length, the longest about ⅓′ long and longer than the radial spines. Bark of the trunk and of the large branches smooth, light brown or purple, usually unarmed, ½′—¾′ thick, finally separating into small closely appressed black scales. Wood reticulate, hard, compact, light reddish brown and rather lustrous, with thin conspicuous medullary rays, well-defined layers of annual growth, and thick pale or nearly white sapwood.
Distribution. Foothills and low mountain slopes of southern Arizona and northern Sonora; very abundant.
Glabrous trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, and usually opposite coriaceous entire persistent leaves, with interpetiolar stipules. Flowers in axillary clusters; calyx-lobes valvate in the bud, persistent; petals inserted on the tube of the calyx and as many as its lobes; stamens inserted at the base of a conspicuous disk; anthers 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; pistil of 2—5 united carpels; ovary 2—5-celled; ovules usually 2 in each cell, suspended from its apex, collateral, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit usually indehiscent, 1-celled and 1-seeded.
The Mangrove family is tropical, with most of its seventeen genera confined to the Old World.
Trees, with pithy branchlets, thick astringent bark, and adventitious fleshy roots. Leaves ovate or elliptic, glabrous, petiolate; stipules elongated, acuminate, infolding the bud, caducous. Flowers perfect, yellow or creamy white, sessile or pedicellate, bibracteolate, the bractlets united into an involucral cup, in pedunculate dichotomously or trichotomously branched clusters, the base of their branches surrounded by an involucre of 2 ovate 3-lobed persistent bracts, or 1-flowered; calyx 4-lobed, the lobes acute, coriaceous, ribbed on the inner surface and thickened on the margins, two or three times longer than the turbinate globose tube, reflexed at maturity, persistent; petals 4, induplicate in the bud, alternate with and longer than the calyx-lobes, inserted on a fleshy disk-like ring in the mouth of the calyx-tube, involute on the margins, coated on the inner surface with long pale hairs, or flat and naked, caducous; stamens 8—12; filaments short or 0; anthers attached at the base, introrse, elongated, connivent, areolate; ovary partly inferior, conic, 2-celled, contracted into two subulate spreading styles stigmatic at apex. Fruit a conic coriaceous berry surrounded by the reflexed calyx-lobes and perforated at the apex by the germinating embryo. Seed germinating in the fruit before falling, the apex surrounded by a thin albuminous cup-like aril; seed-coat thick and fleshy; embryo surrounded by a thin layer of albumen; cotyledons dark purple; radicle elongated, clavate, and when fully grown separating from the narrow exserted woody tube inclosing the plumule and developed from the cotyledons after the ripening of the fruit.
Rhizophora with three species is widely and generally distributed on the shores of tidal marshes in the tropical regions of the two hemispheres, one specie reaching those of southern Florida. It possesses astringent properties; the bark has been used in tanning leather, in dyeing, and as a febrifuge. The wood is hard, durable, and dark-colored. By means of the aerial germination of its seeds and in its power to develop roots from trunks and branches, Rhizophora is especially adapted to maintain itself on low tidal shores and is an important factor in protecting and extending them into the ocean. Roots springing from the stems at a considerable distance above the ground and arching outward descend into the water and fix themselves in the mud beneath, while roots growing down from the branches enter the ground and gradually thicken into stems. The fully grown radicle ready to put forth roots and leaves, and often 10′—12′ long, is thicker and heavier at the root end than at the other, and in detaching itself from the cotyledons and in falling the heavy end sticks in the mud, while the plumule at the other end, held above the shallow surface of the water, soon unfolds its leaves.
The generic name, from ῥίζα and φέρειν, was used by early authors to designate various climbing plants with thickened roots.
Leaves ovate or elliptic, rounded or acute at apex, gradually narrowed at base, dark green and very lustrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 3½′—5′ long and 1′—2′ wide, with slightly thickened margins, a broad midrib, and reticulate veinlets; persistent for one or two years; petioles ½′—1½′ in length; stipules lanceolate, acute, 1½′ long, deciduous as the leaf unfolds. Flowers produced through the year, 1′ in diameter, pedicellate, in 2 or 3-flowered clusters on peduncles 1½′ long from the axils of young leaves; petals pale yellow, coated on the inner surface with long pale hairs; stamens 8 with villose filaments. Fruit 1′ long, rusty brown, slightly roughened by minute bosses, the hard woody thick-walled tube developed from the cotyledons protruding ½′—⅔′ from its apex after the germination of the seed, covering the plumule, and holding the dark brown radicle marked with occasional orange-colored lenticels and when fully grown 10′—12′ long and ¼′—⅓′ thick near the apex.
A round-topped bushy tree, with spreading branches usually 15°—20° high, forming almost impenetrable thickets with its numerous aerial roots, or occasionally 70°—80° high, with a tall straight trunk clear of branches for more than half its length, a narrow head, and stout glabrous dark red-brown branchlets, becoming lighter colored in their second year and then conspicuously marked by large oval slightly elevated leaf-scars. Bark of young stems and of the branches smooth, light reddish brown, becoming on old trunks ⅓′—½′ thick, and gray faintly tinged with red, the surface irregularly fissured and broken into thin appressed scales. Wood exceedingly heavy, hard, close-grained, strong, dark reddish brown streaked with lighter brown, with pale sapwood of 40—50 layers of annual growth; used for fuel and wharf-piles.
Distribution. Shores of Florida from Mosquito Inlet on the east coast and Cedar Keys on the west coast to the southern keys; most abundant south of latitude 29°, following the coast with wide thickets and ascending the rivers for many miles; on Cape Sable and the shores of Bay Biscayne sometimes growing at a little distance from the coast on ground not submerged by the tide, and here attaining its largest size, with tall straight trunks and few aerial roots; on Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Antilles, the west coast of Mexico, lower California, the Galapagos Islands, and from Central America along the northeast coast of South America to the limits of the tropics.
Trees or shrubs, with astringent juice, naked buds, and alternate or opposite simple entire coriaceous persistent leaves, without stipules. Flowers regular, perfect, or polygamous; calyx 5-lobed, the lobes valvate in the bud; petals 5, valvate in the bud, inserted at the base of the calyx, or 0; disk epigynous; stamens 5—10, inserted on the limb of the calyx; filaments slender, filiform, distinct, exserted; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary 1-celled; style slender, subulate; stigma minute, terminal, entire; ovules usually 2, suspended from the apex of the cell, collateral, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit drupaceous, often crowned with the accrescent calyx. Seed solitary; albumen 0; embryo straight, with convolute cotyledons; radicle minute, turned toward the hilum.
Of the fifteen genera of this family, widely distributed through the tropics, three have arborescent representatives in southern Florida.
A tree or shrub, with terete often spinescent branchlets. Leaves crowded at the end of spur-like lateral branchlets much thickened and roughened by the large elevated crowded leaf-scars, alternate, obovate to oblong-lanceolate, rounded and slightly emarginate or minutely apiculate at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, coriaceous, bluish green on the upper surface and yellow-green on the lower surface, pubescent while young, especially beneath, and glabrous at maturity with the exception of rufous hairs on the under surface of the stout midrib, and on the short stout petiole. Flowers perfect, greenish white, hairy on the outer surface, sessile in the axils of minute bracts, in lax elongated axillary clustered rufous-pubescent spikes; calyx-tube ovoid, constricted above the ovary, the limb campanulate, 5-lobed, the lobes valvate in the bud, persistent; petals 0; stamens 10, in two ranks, inflexed in the bud, unequal, 5 longer than the others and inserted opposite the calyx-lobes under the hairy 5-lobed disk, the others shorter, alternate with them and inserted higher on the calyx-tube; filaments incurved near the apex; anthers minute, sagittate; ovary included in the tube of the calyx; style thickened and villose at the base; ovules suspended on an elongated slender funiculus. Fruit ovoid, conic, oblique, and more or less falcate, irregularly 5-angled, coriaceous, light brown, puberulous on the outer surface, with thin membranaceous flesh inseparable from the crustaceous stone porous toward the interior. Seed ovoid, acute; seed-coat coriaceous, chestnut-brown; cotyledons fleshy; radicle superior.
Bucida with a single species is confined to tropical America, where it is distributed from southern Florida and the Bahama Islands through the West Indies to Guiana and Central America.
The generic name is from βοῦς, in allusion to the fancied resemblance of the fruit to the horns of an ox.