Leaves broadly ovate or rarely obovate, contracted into a short broad point or occasionally rounded at apex, rounded, truncate or cordate at base, 2½′—5′ long, 1½′—5′ wide, thin and firm, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower, with a light yellow midrib, and slender remote primary veins arcuate and united near the margins and connected by finely reticulate veinlets; petioles slender, sometimes 1′ in length; stipules ovate-lanceolate, ½′ long, tinged with red. Flowers: receptacles obovoid, solitary or in pairs, yellow until fully grown, ultimately turning bright red and becoming ¼′—½′ long, on stout drooping stalks ¼′—1′ in length; flowers sessile or pedicellate, separated by minute chaff-like scales more or less laciniate at apex; calyx of the staminate flower divided nearly to the base into three or four broad acute lobes; calyx of the pistillate flower with narrow lobes shorter than the ovoid pointed ovary. Fruit ovoid; seed ovoid, with a membranaceous light brown coat and an oblong lateral pale hilum.
An epiphytal tree, rarely 40°—50° high, with a trunk 12′—18′ in diameter, spreading branches occasionally developing aerial roots and forming an open irregular head, and terete branchlets light red and slightly puberulous when they first appear, becoming brown tinged with orange and later with red, and marked by minute pale lenticels, narrow stipular scars, large elevated horizontal oval or semiorbicular leaf-scars showing a marginal row of conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and elevated concave receptacle scars. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light orange-brown or yellow, with thick hardly distinguishable sapwood.
Distribution. Usually on dry slightly elevated coral rocks; Florida from the shores of Bay Biscayne to the Everglades Keys, and on several of the southern keys to Key West; not common; on the Bahama Islands and in Cuba.
XIII. OLACACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with watery juices, their stems sometimes twining, and alternate usually entire persistent leaves, without stipules. Flowers perfect or polygamous, in axillary cymes or racemes, rarely solitary; calyx 4 to 6-lobed; petals 4—6, inserted on a hypogynous disk, free or united into a campanulate or tubular corolla; stamens 4—12, inserted on the tube of the corolla; filaments free, rarely united; anthers oblong, introrse, opening longitudinally; ovary superior or partly inferior, free or immersed in the disk, 1—4-celled; styles mostly united; stigmas entire or lobed; ovules 1—3 in each cell of the ovary. Fruit drupaceous, naked or nearly inclosed in the enlarged disk, 1-celled, 1-seeded; seed pendulous; embryo minute, erect, in copious fleshly albumen; radicle superior.
Olacaceæ with twenty-five genera and a large number of species is confined to the tropics, and is most abundant in those of the Old World.
CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT GENERA.
Corolla-lobes short; stamens as many as its lobes; drupe almost inclosed in the enlarged disk of the flower; branches unarmed.1. [Schoepfia.] Corolla-lobes elongated; stamens twice as many as its lobes; drupe nearly naked; branchlets armed.2. [Ximenia.]