2. ANONA L.
Trees or shrubs, with glandular often reticulated bark, terete branchlets marked by conspicuous leaf-scars, and often pubescent during their first season. Leaves coriaceous, often glandular-punctate, persistent or tardily deciduous. Flowers nodding on bracted pedicels; calyx small, 3-lobed, green, deciduous; petals 6 in 2 series, valvate in the bud, hypogynous, sessile, ovate, concave, 3-angled at apex, thick and fleshy, white or yellow, the exterior alternate with the lobes of the calyx, those of the inner row often much smaller than those of the outer row; stamens club-shaped, densely packed on the receptacle; filaments shorter than the fleshy connective; anther-cells confluent; pistils sessile on the receptacle, free or united; ovary 1-celled; style sessile or slightly stipitate, oblong, stigmatic on the inner face; ovule 1, erect; raphe ventral. Fruit compound, many-celled, fleshy, ovoid or globose, many-seeded. Seeds ovoid to ellipsoidal; cotyledons appressed.
Of the fifty species of Anona widely distributed in the tropics of the two worlds, a single species reaches the coast of southern Florida. Of exotic species, Anona muricata L., the Soursop and Anona reticulata L., of the West Indies, and Anona Cherimolia Mill., of western tropical America, are now occasionally cultivated as fruit-trees in Florida.
Anona is the name given by early authors to the Soursop.
1. [Anona glabra] L. Pond Apple.
Anona palustris Small, not L.
Leaves elliptic or oblong, acute, tapering or rounded at base, bright green on the upper, paler on the lower surface, coriaceous, 3′—5′ long, 1½′—2′ wide, with a prominent midrib; deciduous late in the winter; petioles, stout ½′ in length. Flowers nodding on short stout pedicels thickened at the ends, opening in April from an ovoid 3-angled bud; divisions of the calyx broad-ovate, acute; petals connivent, acute, concave, pale yellow or dirty white, those of the outer row marked on the inner surface near the base by a bright red spot, and broader and somewhat longer than those of the inner row. Fruit ripening in November, broadly ovate, truncate or depressed at base, rounded at apex, 3′—5′ long, 2′—3½′ broad, light green when fully grown, becoming yellow and often marked by numerous dark brown blotches when fully ripe, with a thick elongate fibrous torus and light green slightly aromatic insipid flesh of no comestible value; seeds ½′ long, slightly obovoid, turgid, rounded at the ends, their margins contracted into a narrow wing formed by the thickening of the outer coat.
A tree, 40°—50° high, with a short trunk often 18′ in diameter above the swell of the thickened tapering base sometimes enlarged into spreading buttresses, stout wide-spreading often contorted branches, slender branchlets brown or yellow during their first season, becoming in their second year brown and marked by small scattered wart-like excrescences. Bark ⅛′ thick, dark reddish brown, divided by broad shallow fissures, separating on the surface into numerous small scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, light brown streaked with yellow.
Distribution. Florida: Indian River on the east coast, and the shores of the Manatee River on the west coast to the southern Keys; in shallow fresh water ponds, on swampy hummocks, or on the borders of fresh water streams flowing from the everglades; of its largest size on the shores of Bay Biscayne near the Miami River, growing in the shade of larger trees; forming a pure forest of great extent on the swampy borders of Lake Okechobee; on the Bahama Islands and on several of the Antilles.