Usually a shrub, with numerous slender stems, occasionally arborescent and 18°—20° high, with a straight trunk 6°—8° tall and 2′—3′ in diameter, and stout branchlets roughened by small scattered lenticels, coated at first with dense pale tomentum, soon becoming bright red-brown, scurfy, and glabrous or pubescent. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, nearly ⅛′ long, with numerous loosely imbricated lanceolate acute red-brown scurfy-pubescent scales. Bark thin, smooth, nearly white.
Distribution. Deep swamps, Round Lake, Jackson County, and Appalachicola, and Saint Andrews Bay, Florida; near Mobile and Stockton, Alabama; near Poplarville, Pearl County, Mississippi, and Bogalusa, Washington Parish, Louisiana.
3. [Myrica californica] Cham. Wax Myrtle.
Leaves oblanceolate to oblong-lanceolate, acute at apex, remotely serrate except at the gradually narrowed base with small incurved teeth, decurrent on a short stout petiole, thin and firm, dark green and lustrous above, yellow-green, glabrous or puberulous and marked by minute black glandular dots below, 2′—4′ long, ½′—¾′ wide, with a narrow yellow midrib and numerous obscure primary veins arcuate near the thickened and revolute margins, slightly fragrant, gradually deciduous after the end of their first year. Flowers subtended by conspicuous bractlets, those of the two sexes on the same plant; staminate in oblong simple aments often 1′ long, pistillate in shorter aments in the axils of upper leaves, androgynous aments occurring between the two with staminate flowers at their base and pistillate flowers above, or with staminate flowers also mixed with the pistillate at their apex; scales of the aments ovate, acute, coated with pale tomentum; stamens numerous, with oblong slightly emarginate dark red-purple anthers soon becoming yellow; ovary ovoid, with bright red exserted styles. Fruit in short crowded spikes ripening in the early autumn and usually falling during the winter, globose, papillose, dark purple, covered with a thin coat of grayish white wax; seed pale reddish brown, minute.
A tree, occasionally 40° high, with a trunk 14′—15′ in diameter, short slender branches forming a narrow compact round-topped head, and stout branchlets coated at first with loose tomentum, dark green or light or dark red-brown, glabrous or pubescent during their first season, becoming in their second year much roughened by the elevated leaf-scars, darker and ultimately ashy gray; usually smaller at the north and toward the northern and southern limits of its range reduced to a low shrub often only 3°—4° tall. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, about ⅓′ thick, with loosely imbricated ovate acute dark red-brown tomentose scales nearly ½′ long when fully grown and long-persistent on the branch. Bark smooth, compact, 1/16′—⅛′ thick, dark gray or light brown on the surface and dark red-brown internally. Wood heavy, very hard and strong, brittle, close-grained, light rose color, with thick lighter colored sapwood.
Distribution. Ocean sand-dunes and moist hillsides in the vicinity of the coast from the shores of Puget Sound to the neighborhood of Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, California; of its largest size on the shores of the Bay of San Francisco.
Occasionally used in California as a garden plant.
VII. LEITNERIACEÆ.
A tree or shrub, with pale slightly fissured bark, scaly buds, stout terete pithy branchlets marked by pale conspicuous nearly circular lenticels and by elevated crescent-shaped angled or obscurely 3-lobed leaf-scars, very light soft wood, and thick fleshy stoloniferous yellow roots. Leaves involute in the bud, lanceolate to elliptic-lanceolate, acuminate or acute and short-pointed at apex, gradually narrowed at base, entire, with slightly revolute undulate margins, penniveined with remote primary veins arcuate and united near the margins, and conspicuous reticulate veinlets, petiolate, at first coated on the lower surface and on the petioles with thick pale tomentum and puberulous on the upper surface, thick and firm at maturity, bright green and lustrous above, pale and villose-pubescent below, deciduous. Flowers in unisexual aments, with ovate acute concave tomentose scales, the male and female on different plants, opening in early spring from buds formed the previous autumn and covered with acute chestnut-brown hairy scales; the staminate clustered near the end of the branches, their scales bearing on the thickened stipe a ring of 3—12 stamens, with slender incurved filaments and oblong light yellow introrse 2-celled anthers opening longitudinally; perianth 0; pistillate aments scattered, shorter and more slender than the staminate, their scales bearing in their axils a short-stalked pistil surrounded by a rudimentary perianth of small gland-fringed scales, the 2 larger lateral, the others next the axis of the inflorescence; ovary superior, pubescent, 1-celled, with an elongated flattened style inserted obliquely, curving inward above the middle in anthesis, grooved and stigmatic on the inner face; ovule solitary, attached laterally, ascending, semianatropous; micropyle directed upward. Fruit an oblong compressed dry drupe thick and rounded on the ventral, narrowed on the dorsal edge, rounded at base, thin and pointed at apex, chestnut-brown, rugose, with a thick dry exocarp closely investing the thin-walled light brown crustaceous rugose nutlet. Seed flattened, rounded at the ends, light brown, marked on the thick edge with the oblong nearly black hilum; embryo erect, surrounded by thin fleshy albumen; cotyledons oblong, flattened; radicle superior, conical, short, and fleshy.