Distribution. Hurricane Island at the mouth of Medway River, Liberty County, Georgia (Miss J. King); hummocks, peninsular of Florida to Alachua and Manatee Counties; not common; in Cuba.
3. [Sapindus Drummondii] Hook. & Arn. Wild China-tree.
Leaves appearing in March and April, with a slender grooved puberulous rachis, without wings, and 4—9 pairs of alternate obliquely lanceolate acuminate leaflets, glabrous on the upper surface and covered with short pale pubescence on the lower surface, coriaceous, prominently reticulate-venulose, pale yellow-green, 2′—3′ long, ½′—⅔′ wide, short-petiolulate; deciduous in the autumn or early winter. Flowers appearing in May and June in clusters 6′—9′ long and 5′—6′ wide, with a pubescent many-angled stem and branches; sepals acute and concave, ciliate on the margins, much shorter than the obovate white petals rounded at apex, contracted into a long claw hairy on the inner surface and furnished at base with a deeply cleft scale hairy on the margins; filaments hairy, with long soft hairs. Fruit ripening in September and October, persistent on the branches until the following spring, glabrous, not keeled, yellow, ½′ in diameter, turning black in drying; seeds obovoid, dark brown.
A tree, 40°—50° high, with a trunk sometimes 1½°—2° in diameter, usually erect branches, and branchlets at first slightly many-angled, pale yellow-green, pubescent, becoming in their second year terete, pale gray, slightly puberulous, and marked by numerous small lenticels. Bark of the trunk ⅓′—½′ thick, separating by deep fissures into long narrow plates broken on the surface into small red-brown scales. Wood heavy, strong, close-grained, light brown tinged with yellow, with lighter colored sapwood of about 30 layers of annual growth; splitting easily into thin strips and largely used in the manufacture of baskets used in harvesting cotton, and for the frames of pack-saddles.
Distribution. Moist clay soil or dry limestone uplands; southwestern Missouri to northeastern and southern Kansas, eastern Louisiana (Tangipahoa Parish R. S. Cocks), and to extreme western and southwestern Oklahoma, through eastern Texas to the Rio Grande, over the Edwards Plateau, and in the mountain valleys of western Texas and of southern New Mexico and Arizona; in northern Mexico.
2. EXOTHEA Macf.
A tree, with thin scaly bark, and terete branchlets covered with lenticels. Leaves petiolate, abruptly pinnate or 3 or rarely 1-foliolate, glabrous, without stipules, persistent; leaflets oblong or oblong-ovate, acute, rounded or emarginate at apex, with entire undulate margins, obscurely veined, thin, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface and slightly paler on the lower surface. Flowers regular, polygamo-diœcious, on short pedicels from the axils of minute deciduous bracts covered with thick pale tomentum, in ample terminal or axillary wide-branched panicles clothed with orange-colored pubescence; sepals 5, ovate, rounded at apex, ciliate on the margins, puberulous, persistent; petals 5, white, ovate, rounded at apex, short-unguiculate, alternate with and rather longer and narrower than the sepals; disk annular, fleshy, irregularly 5-lobed, puberulous; stamens 7 or 8, inserted on the disk, as long as the petals in the staminate flower, much shorter in the pistillate flower; filaments filiform, glabrous, anthers oblong, with a broad connective, rudimentary in the staminate flower; ovary sessile on the disk, conic, pubescent, 2-celled, contracted into a short thick style, rudimentary in the staminate flower, stigma large, declinate, obtuse; ovules 2 in each cell, suspended from the summit of the inner angle, collateral, anatropous, raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit a nearly spherical 1-seeded berry containing the rudiment of the second cell and tipped with the short remnant of the style, surrounded at base by the persistent reflexed sepals; flesh becoming thick, dark purple, and juicy at maturity. Seed short-oblong to subglobose, solitary, suspended; seed-coat thin, coriaceous, orange-brown and lustrous; embryo subglobose, filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons fleshy, plano-convex, puberulous; radicle superior, very short, uncinate, turned toward the small hilum and inclosed in a lateral cavity of the seed-coat.
The genus is represented by a single West Indian species.
The generic name is from ἐξωθέω, in allusion to its removal from a related genus.