Seven or eight species are now recognized, inhabitants of tropical America where they are distributed from southern Florida, through the West Indies to southern Mexico and Guatemala. Piscidia from the bark of the roots of Ichthyomethia is sometimes used medicinally.
The generic name, from ἰχθύς and μέθυ, indicates the Carib use of one of the species.
1. [Ichthyomethia piscipula] A. S. Hitch. Jamaica Dogwood.
Leaves 4′—9′ long, 5—11-foliolate, with stout petioles; leaflets oval, obovate or broad-oblong, obtuse or short-acuminate at apex, rounded or cuneate at base, with thick pubescent petiolules, when they first appear coated like the petioles with rufous hairs, at maturity coriaceous, glabrous and dark green above, pale and more or less clothed below with rufous or canescent pubescence along the elevated conspicuous midrib, and numerous thin veins arching and united at the entire undulate thickened margins, or covered with soft pubescence below; deciduous in spring. Flowers opening in May, ¾′ long, on slender pedicels sometimes 1½′ in length, in canescent ovoid densely flowered or elongated thyrsoid panicles, with short 3—12-flowered branches, from the axils of the fallen leaves of the previous year; calyx canescent, 5-lobed; petals white tinged with red, the standard hoary-canescent on the outer surface, marked with a green blotch on the inner surface, its claw as long as the calyx; ovary sericeous. Fruit ripening in July and August, broad-winged, light brown, 3′—4′ long and 1′—1½′ across the wings.
A tree, 40°—50° high, with a trunk often 2°—3° in diameter, stout erect sometimes contorted branches forming an irregular head, and branches coated when they first appear with thick rufous pubescence disappearing during their first summer, becoming glabrous or glabrate, bright reddish brown, conspicuously marked by oblong longitudinal lenticels, and large elevated horizontal slightly obcordate leaf-scars marked by the ends of numerous small scattered fibro-vascular bundles. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, ⅛′—¼′ long, with thin hoary-pubescent scales. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, gray more or less blotched with olive and covered with small square scales. Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, clear yellow-brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood, very durable in contact with the ground; largely used in Florida in boat-building, and for firewood and charcoal. In the West Indies the bark of the roots, young branches and powdered leaves were used by the Caribs to stupefy fish and facilitate their capture.
Distribution. One of the commonest of the tropical trees of Florida from the shores of Bay Biscayne to the southern keys, and on the west coast from the neighborhood of Peace Creek to Cape Sable; on many of the Antilles and in southern Mexico. Sterile branches collected by C. T. Simpson in the neighborhood of Cape Sable indicate that a second species occurs in Florida.
XXIV. ZYGOPHYLLACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with hard resinous wood, and opposite pinnate leaves, with stipules. Flowers perfect, regular; calyx 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; petals as many as the calyx-lobes, imbricated in the bud, hypogynous; stamens twice as many as the petals, hypogynous; filaments distinct; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary 5-celled; styles united, terminating in a minute 5-lobed or entire stigma; ovules numerous, suspended, anatropous; raphe ventral. Fruit capsular, angled or winged, separating at maturity into 5 indehiscent carpels. Seeds solitary or in pairs in each cell; seed-coat thick and fleshy; embryo straight or nearly so; cotyledons oval, foliaceous; radicle short, superior.
Of the fourteen genera of this family, mostly confined to the warmer parts of the northern hemisphere, one only, Guaiacum, has an arborescent representative in the United States.