2. STYRAX L.
Trees or shrubs, lepidote or stellate-tomentose except on the upper surface of the leaves, with slender terete slightly zigzag branchlets, without a terminal bud, axillary buds, with imbricated scales, and fibrous roots. Leaves involute in the bud, entire or slightly serrate. Flowers usually white on short ebracteolate drooping pedicels from the axils of small bracts, in simple or branched usually drooping axillary racemes; calyx cup-shaped, adnate to the base of the ovary or nearly free, the margin truncate, obscurely or conspicuously 5-toothed or rarely 2 or 5-parted; corolla epigynous, campanulate, 5 or rarely 6 or 7-parted, with a short tube usually longer than the lanceolate oblong or spatulate erect and spreading or revolute lobes valvate or imbricated in the bud, stamens 8—13, usually 10, longer than the corolla slightly united below into a ring or short tube; filaments flattened above; cells of the anthers linear parallel, erect; ovary broad-conic, subglobose or depressed, densely villose or rarely glabrous, at first 3-celled, becoming 1-celled or nearly 1-celled after anthesis, crowned by a subulate or thickened style terminating in a small indistinctly 3-lobed or capitate stigma; ovules few or rarely solitary, ascending; raphe dorsal, micropyle inferior. Fruit globose or slightly obovoid, drupaceous; pericarp hard and indehiscent or irregularly 3-valved or fleshy and irregularly dehiscent; endocarp glabrous, crustaceous or indurate; seed 1 by abortion or very rarely 2, filling the cavity of the stone, erect; testa membranaceous, mostly adherent to the walls of the stone; albumen fleshy or rarely horny; cotyledons usually broad, the elongated terete radicle turned toward the broad basal hilum.
Styrax is widely distributed in warm and tropical countries except in tropical and south Africa and in Australasia, extending northward into the southeastern United States and to California, southern Europe, central and western China and central Japan. Of nearly one hundred species which are now distinguished five are found within the territory of the United States; one of these occasionally becomes a small tree.
Storax and benzoin, aromatic resinous balsams, are obtained from Styrax officinale L. of southern Europe and Asia Minor, and from Styrax Benzoin Dryand. of Malaysia.
The generic name is that of the Greek name of Styrax officinale.
1. [Styrax grandiflora] Ait.
Leaves thin, deciduous, obovate, rounded and abruptly pointed or acute or acuminate or rarely rounded at apex, cuneate or rounded at the narrow base, entire or remotely serrate with small apiculate teeth, when they unfold ciliate on the margins, slightly stellate-pubescent on the midrib and veins above, and coated below with hoary tomentum, and at maturity pale green and glabrous or nearly glabrous above, pale tomentose and villose on the midrib and veins below, 2½′—5′ long and 1′—3′ wide; petioles ¼′ in length, hoary-tomentose early in the season, becoming pubescent. Flowers opening in early spring after the leaves are more than half grown, ¾′—1′ long, on slender pubescent or tomentose pedicels ¼′ in length, in tomentose leafy erect or spreading axillary racemes 5′ or 6′ long, their bracts and bractlets linear, minute, tomentose, caducous; calyx more or less coarsely 5-toothed, membranaceous, tomentose on the outer surface; corolla 5-parted, the lobes longer than the tube, imbricated in the bud, membranaceous, oblong-obovate, rounded or acute at apex, stellate-pubescent on the outer surface; stamens 10, about as long as the corolla, villose-pubescent below the middle, united below into a short ring; ovary slightly inferior, obovoid, tomentose, 3-celled; style filiform, glabrous, exserted; ovules 3 or 4 in each cell. Fruit hoary-tomentose, slightly obovoid, rounded and tipped at apex with the remnants of the style, gradually narrowed and surrounded below by the calyx, ⅓′ long, and ¼′ in diameter, the outer coat crustaceous, indehiscent; seed obovoid, dark orange-brown, filling the cavity of the fruit.
A tree, rarely 40° high, with a tall straight trunk sometimes 8′ in diameter, short spreading branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and slender branchlets thickly coated when they first appear with hoary stellate pubescence more or less persistent during three seasons, ultimately glabrous and light or dark chestnut-brown; more often a broad shrub 6°—20° high. Bark of the trunk ⅓′—½′ thick, close, smooth and dark red-brown. Winter-buds: axillary, often 3, superposed, acute, covered with hoary ultimately rusty tomentum, about ⅛′ long.
Distribution. Low wet woods and the borders of swamps; southeastern Virginia, southward usually near the coast to the valley of the Apalachicola River, Florida, and through the Gulf states to western Louisiana, ranging inland to northern Georgia, northeastern Mississippi, and to the valley of the Red River at Natchitoches, Louisiana; of its largest size and perhaps only arborescent near Laurel Hill, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana.