2. MAYTENUS Molina.
Small unarmed trees or shrubs with slender branchlets and minute buds. Leaves alternate often in two ranks, coriaceous, petiolate, persistent; stipules minute, deciduous. Flowers polygamous, small, white, yellow or red, axillary, solitary or in cymose or fascicled clusters; calyx 5-lobed; petals 5, spreading; stamens 5, inserted under the orbicular disk, with undulate margins; filaments filiform; anthers ovoid-cordate; ovary immersed and confluent with the disk, 2—4-celled; style 0 or columnar; stigma 2—4-lobed, usually sessile; ovules erect, solitary or in pairs in each cell. Fruit capsular, coriaceous, 2—4-valved; seed erect, surrounded at base or entirely in a pulpy aril; testa crustaceous; albumen fleshy or wanting; cotyledons foliaceous.
Maytenus with some seventy species is widely distributed in the tropical and subtropical regions of America from southern Florida, where one species occurs, to Brazil and Chile.
The Chilean Maytenus boaria Molina, a handsome tree of graceful habit, is occasionally cultivated in California.
The generic name is from Mayten, the Chilean name of one of the species.
1. [Maytenus phyllanthoides] Benth.
Leaves oblong-obovate to elliptic, rounded and rarely emarginate or acute at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base and entire, deeply tinged with red when they unfold and at maturity, 1′—1½′ long and ½′—¾′ wide, with thickened often slightly undulate margins, a slender midrib, obscure primary veins, and conspicuous reticulate veinlets; petioles stout, ⅙′—¼′ in length. Flowers usually solitary or in compact fascicles, short-stalked, about 1/12′ in diameter; calyx-lobes rounded at apex, often persistent under the fruit, reddish, shorter than the white petals; ovary 3—4-celled. Fruit solitary, short-stalked, broad-obovoid, 4-angled, rounded and minutely mucronate at apex, abruptly narrowed below, bright red, ¼′—⅓′ long and broad, 1-celled, 3—4-valved, the valves opening to the base, ridged down the inner surface with a low ridge developed from the dissepiment, 2—4-seeded; seed ellipsoid, acute at the ends, 1/12′ long, surrounded at base by an open bright red aril.
A round-topped tree, rarely 20° high, with a trunk 1°—2° in diameter (teste J. K. Small), and slender alternate glabrous pale gray branchlets; usually a low shrub.
Distribution. Florida, west coast, Captiva Island, Lee County, to the neighborhood of Cape Sable; Cocoanut Grove, Dade County, and on many of the southern keys; on bluffs of Matagorda Bay near Corpus Christi, Nueces County, Texas; in northern Mexico and Lower California; probably of its largest size in Florida on Sands Key and on Captiva Island.