1. TORRUBIA Vell.
Glabrous or pubescent unarmed trees or shrubs. Leaves opposite or rarely alternate, entire, short-stalked. Flowers perfect, or rarely unisexual; calyx tubular or funnel-shaped, elongated, 5-lobed, the lobes plaited in the bud, erect or spreading; stamens inserted on the base of the calyx under the ovary, minute or rudimentary in the unisexual pistillate flower; filaments folded in the bud, filiform, unequal, free; anthers oblong, introrse, 2-celled, the cells parallel, opening longitudinally; ovary oblong-ovoid, sessile, 1-celled, gradually narrowed into a columnar style; stigmas capitate, lacerate. Fruit fleshy, cylindric, costate, smooth; utricle elongated, with a thin membranaceous wall confluent with the thin transparent coat of the erect seed.
Torrubia, with about 15 species is confined to tropical America, one species extending into southern Florida. The genus was named in honor of Joseph Torrubia, a Spanish naturalist of the 18th century.
1. [Torrubia longifolia] Britt. Blolly.
Pisonia longifolia Sarg.
Leaves oblong-obovate, rounded or occasionally emarginate at apex, gradually narrowed at base, 1′—1½′ long, ½′ wide, thick and firm, with slightly thickened undulate margins, light green and glabrous, paler on the lower than on the upper surface, with a stout midrib and obscure veins; petioles stout, channeled, ½′ in length. Flowers perfect or unisexual, autumnal, greenish yellow, short-pedicellate, in terminal long-stalked few-flowered panicled cymes, with slender divergent branches, the ultimate divisions 2 or 3-flowered; bracts and bractlets minute, acute; calyx funnel-shaped, divided nearly to the middle into acute erect lobes about half as long as the stamens and as long as the style. Fruit ripening in the winter or early spring, prominently costate with ten rounded ribs, fleshy, smooth, bright red, ¾′ long; utricle terete, light brown.
A tree, occasionally 30°—50° high, with an erect or inclining trunk, 15′—20′ in diameter, stout spreading branches forming a compact round-topped head, and slender terete branchlets light orange color when they first appear, later often producing numerous short spur-like lateral branchlets, light reddish brown or ashy gray, and marked by large elevated semiorbicular or lunate leaf-scars; usually much smaller; often shrubby. Bark about 1/16′ thick, light red-brown, and broken into thin appressed scales. Wood heavy, rather soft, weak, coarse-grained, yellow tinged with brown, with thick darker colored sapwood.
Distribution. Sea-beaches and the shores of salt water lagoons; Cape Canaveral, Florida to the southern keys, attaining its largest size in Florida on Elliott’s Key and Old Rhodes Key; on the Bahama Islands and in Cuba.
Subdivision 2. Petalatæ. Flowers with both calyx and corolla (without a corolla in Lauraceæ, in Liquidambar in Hamamelidaceæ, in Euphorbiaceæ, in some species of Acer, in Reynosia, Condalia, and Krugiodendron in Rhamnaceæ, in Fremontia in Sterculiaceæ, in Calyptranthes in Myrtaceæ, and in Conocarpus in Combretaceæ).
Section 1. Polypetalæ. Corolla of separate petals.
A. Ovary superior (partly inferior in Hamamelidaceæ; inferior in Malus, Sorbus, Cratægus and Amelanchier in Rosaceæ).