XLVIII. MYRTACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs abounding in pungent aromatic volatile oil, with minute scaly buds. Leaves opposite, simple, mostly entire, pellucid-punctate, penniveined, persistent, the slender obscure veins arcuate and united within the thickened revolute margins; stipules 0. Flowers perfect, regular; calyx 4—5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud, or lid-like and deciduous; petals 2—5, imbricated in the bud, inserted on the margin of the disk, or 0; stamens very numerous, inserted in many ranks with the petals; filaments slender, inflexed in the bud, exserted; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary 2—4-celled; style simple, filiform, crowned with a minute stigma; ovules numerous or 2 or 3 in each cell, attached on a central placenta, anatropous or semianatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit baccate, crowned with the persistent calyx-lobes, 1—4-seeded. Seeds without albumen; seed-coat membranaceous.
The Myrtle family with seventy-four genera is chiefly tropical and Australasian, with representatives in southern Europe, extratropical Africa, and extratropical South America. Two genera are represented by small trees in the flora of southern Florida. To this family, beside the Myrtle, belong the Australian Eucalypti, large and important timber-trees largely planted in California, and the Guava, cultivated in Florida for its fruit.
CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES.
Calyx closed in the bud by a lid-like deciduous limb; petals 0.1. [Calyptranthes.] Calyx 4 or 5-lobed with persistent lobes; petals 4 or 5.2. [Eugenia.]