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.