Manual of the Trees of North America (Exclusive of Mexico) 2nd ed.

by Charles Sprague Sargent

LVI. SAPOTACEÆ.

Trees or shrubs, with milky juice. Leaves alternate, simple, entire, pinnately veined, mostly coriaceous, petiolate, without stipules. Flowers perfect, regular, small, in axillary clusters; calyx of 5-8 sepals imbricated in the bud, persistent under the fruit; corolla hypogynous, 5—8-cleft, the divisions imbricated in the bud, often with as many or twice as many internal appendages borne on its throat; disk 0; fertile stamens as many as and opposite the divisions of the corolla and inserted on its short tube, often with sterile filaments (staminodia) alternate with them; anthers generally extrorse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; pistil of united carpels; ovary sessile, usually 5-celled; style simple; ovules solitary in each cell, attached to an axile placenta, ascending, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle inferior. Fruit baccate, bearing at apex the remnant of the style, usually 1-celled and 1-seeded. Seed with or without albumen; embryo large; radicle terete, inferior.

This family with fifty genera is chiefly tropical and subtropical, with only Bumelia extending in North America into temperate regions. Some of the species produce valuable timber or edible and agreeable fruits. From Palaquium gutta Burkh., of the Malay Peninsula, gutta-percha is obtained. Five genera are represented by trees in the flora of the United States.

CONSPECTUS OF THE GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES.

Calyx of 5 sepals in a single series. Staminodia 1 in each sinus of the corolla. Appendages of the corolla 0; staminodia slender, scale-like.1. [Sideroxylum.] Appendages of the corolla present; staminodia petaloid. Staminodia linear, fimbriate; seeds, with copious albumen.2. [Dipholis.] Staminodia petaloid, entire or denticulate; seeds, without albumen.3. [Bumelia.] Staminodia and appendages of the corolla 0; leaves covered below with lustrous copper-colored or golden pubescence.4. [Chrysophyllum.] Calyx of 6—8 sepals in 2 series; corolla 6—8-lobed, with 2 appendages in each sinus inside of a scale-like or petaloid staminodia.5. [Mimusops.]