1. SCHOEPFIA Schreb.
Trees or shrubs with slender unarmed branchlets. Leaves entire, subcoriaceous, petiolate. Flowers small, perfect in axillary cymes, rarely solitary; calyx disciform, obscurely 4-toothed, or nearly entire, petals 4, 5 or rarely 6, united, their tips free, valvate; stamens opposite the petals, filaments free, anthers attached by the back; ovary partly immersed in the disk, 3-celled; style elongated, stigma 3-lobed; ovules 3 in each cell, pendulous from the free apex of the axile placentas. Fruit nearly inclosed in the enlarged disk of the flower, the stone crustaceous or chartaceous.
Schoepfia with twelve or fourteen species is distributed in the New World from southern Florida and Lower California to Brazil and Peru, and in the Old World from southern Japan and southern and western China to the East Indies and the eastern Himalayas.
The generic name is in compliment to Johann David Schoepf, German physician and botanist, and traveler in North America and the West Indies.
1. [Schoepfia chrysophylloides] Planch.
Schoepfia Schreberi Small, not Gmel.
Leaves elliptic to oblong-ovate, often slightly falcate, acuminate at apex, cuneate and often unsymmetric at base, light green and lustrous above, paler below, 1½′—3′ long, ¾′—1¼′ wide, and on vigorous shoots sometimes 4′ long and 1¾′ wide; petioles stout, wing-margined, ¼′—⅓′ in length. Flowers sessile, pink or red, in axillary 1—3- usually 2-flowered clusters on peduncles 1/24′—⅙′ in length; calyx cup-shaped, the rim slightly dilated, almost filled by the fleshy disk; corolla ovate-cylindric, ⅛′—⅙′ long, 4-lobed, the lobes ovate, acute, united, reflexed; stamens 4, adnate to the base of the lobes of the corolla; anthers sessile; ovary mostly immersed in the disk; style not more than 1/24′ long; Fruit ovoid or ovoid-oval scarlet, ⅖′—½′ in length; stone crustaceous; seed not seen.
A tree, sometimes 25°—30° high with a trunk 12′—18′ in diameter, small erect branches and slender pale gray unarmed branchlets. Bark thin, grayish brown, closely and regularly reticulated.
Distribution. In sandy or rocky soil; banks of the Caloosahatchee River, Lee County, near Miami and at Cocoanut Grove, Dade County, and on the southern keys, Florida; on the Bahama Islands, and in Cuba, Jamaica, and Guatamala.