Leaves unfolding in June and persistent until their second season or longer; petioles stout, 1½′—2′ in length, with narrow green wings; leaflets 1½′—2′ long and ¾′—1¼′ wide. Flowers appearing in Florida in June, rather less than ⅛′ in diameter, in few-flowered panicles 3′—4′ long, on a slender peduncle, the staminate and pistillate in separate panicles on the same tree. Fruit ripening in September, ⅜′ long, with a sweet rather agreeable flavor.
A tree, sometimes 35°—40° high, with a trunk occasionally 18′—20′ in diameter, and branchlets pale green when they first appear, becoming gray during their first season and bright red-brown the following year; generally much smaller. Bark of the trunk rarely ⅛′ thick, marked by shallow depressions and numerous minute lenticels. Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, rich dark brown, with thin darker colored sapwood of 4 or 5 layers of annual growth; very durable in contact with the soil and valued in Florida for posts; also used in shipbuilding and for the handles of tools.
Distribution. Southern Florida, Upper Metacombe, Umbrella and Windley’s Keys; rare.
4. UNGNADIA Endl.
A tree or shrub, with thin pale gray fissured bark, slender terete slightly zigzag branchlets, without a terminal bud, marked by large conspicuous obcordate leaf-scars, small obtuse nearly globose winter-buds covered with numerous chestnut-brown imbricated scales, and thick fleshy roots. Leaves long-petioled, 5 or 7 or rarely 3-foliolate, deciduous; leaflets ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, rounded or cuneate, and often oblique at base, irregularly crenulate-serrate, coated when they first appear on the lower surface like the petiole with dense pale tomentum, and pilose above, glabrous at maturity with the exception of a few hairs on the lower surface along the principal veins, pinnately veined, reticulate-venulose, the terminal leaflet long-petiolulate, the others short-petiolulate to subsessile. Flowers irregular, polygamous, in small pubescent fascicles or corymbs appearing just before or with the leaves from the axils of those of the previous year, usually from separate buds, or occasionally from the base of leafy branches; calyx 5-lobed, hypogynous, the lobes oblong-lanceolate, somewhat united irregularly at base only, deciduous; petals 4 by the suppression of the anterior one, or 5 and then alternate with the lobes of the calyx, hypogynous on the margin of a thickened truncate torus, unguiculate, bright rose color, deciduous, the claw as long as the lobes of the calyx, nearly erect, clothed with tomentum, especially on the inner surface, conspicuously appendaged at the summit with a fimbricated crest of short fleshy tufted hairs, the blade obovate, spreading, often erose-crenulate; disk unilateral, oblique, tongue-shaped, surrounding and connate with the base of the stipe of the ovary; stamens 7—10, usually 8 or 9, inserted on the oblique edge of the disk, much exserted and unequal, the anterior ones shorter than the others, equal or almost so and shorter than the petals in the pistillate flower; filaments filiform; anthers oblong, attached near the base; ovary ovoid, 3-celled, pilose, raised on a long stipe, rudimentary in the staminate flower; style subulate, filiform, elongated, slightly curved upward; stigma minute, terminal; ovules 2, borne on the inner angle of the cell near its middle, ascending, the micropyle inferior. Fruit a coriaceous 3-celled loculicidally 3-valved broad-ovoid capsule, conspicuously stipitate, crowned with the remnants of the style, rugosely roughened and dark reddish brown, loculicidally 3-valved, the valves somewhat cordate, bearing the dissepiment on the middle. Seed generally solitary by abortion, almost globose; seed-coat coriaceous, very smooth and shining, dark chestnut-brown or almost black; hilum broad; tegmen thin; embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons thick and fleshy, nearly hemispheric, conferruminate, incumbent on the short conic descending radicle turned toward the hilum, remaining below ground in germination.
Ungnadia with a single species is confined to Texas, New Mexico, and northern Mexico.
The name is in honor of Baron Ferdinand von Ungnad, Ambassador of the Emperor Rudolph II. at the Ottoman Porte who sent seeds of the Horsechestnut-tree from Constantinople to Vienna in the middle of the sixteenth century.
1. [Ungnadia speciosa] Endl. Spanish Buckeye.
