CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT SPECIES OF THE UNITED STATES.
Leaves thin, elliptic, ovate or lanceolate, glabrous at maturity.1. [C. reclinata] (D). Leaves thick or coriaceous. Leaves oblong to elliptic, rounded or acute at apex, densely soft-pubescent.2. [C. cubensis] (D). Leaves elliptic to ovate-lanceolate, bluntly pointed at apex, coriaceous, rusty-pubescent beneath.3. [C. arborescens] (D).
1. [Colubrina reclinata] Brong. Naked Wood.
Leaves elliptic, ovate or lanceolate, usually contracted at apex into a blunt point, cuneate or somewhat rounded and furnished with 2 conspicuous marginal glands at base, and entire when they unfold in early summer thin, glabrous or finely puberulent below and along the principal veins, and at maturity thin, yellow-green, 2½′—3′ long and 1½′ to nearly 2′ wide, with a stout midrib and arcuate primary veins; persistent until their second year; petioles slender, ½′ in length. Flowers in cymes rather shorter than the petioles, on shoots of the year, pubescent, soon becoming glabrate. Fruit ¼′ in diameter and dark orange-red, ripening late in the autumn, on pedicels ½′ in length; seeds light red-brown, ⅛′ long.
A tree, 50°—60° high, with a trunk 3°—4° in diameter, divided by numerous irregular deep furrows multiplying and spreading in all directions, and branchlets slightly angled when they first appear, puberulent and reddish brown, soon becoming glabrate, and in their second season nearly terete, gray or light brown, and marked by numerous small light-colored lenticels. Bark of the trunk thin, orange-brown, exfoliating in large papery scales. Wood heavy, hard, very strong, dark brown tinged with yellow, with thin light yellow sapwood of 8—10 layers of annual growth.
Distribution. Florida, on Umbrella Key, the north end of Key Largo, and on some of the small keys south of Elliott’s Key; of its largest size and forming a forest of considerable extent on Umbrella Key; on the Bahama Islands and on many of the Antilles.
2. [Colubrina cubensis] Brong.
Leaves oblong to elliptic, gradually narrowed and rounded or acute and apiculate at apex, rounded or cuneate at the often unsymmetric base, slightly crenulate-serrate with broad rounded teeth, thick, dull dark green and soft-pubescent on the upper surface, pale and pubescent on the lower surface, 3½′—5′ long and 1¼′—1½′ wide, with a prominent pubescent yellow midrib and slender primary veins; petioles slender, yellow, densely pubescent, ⅓′—½′ in length; stipules linear-lanceolate, long-acuminate, pubescent, ⅓′ in length. Flowers minute on pedicels ⅙′ long, from the axils of ovate acuminate villose caducous bracts, in villose cymes on peduncles longer than the petioles; calyx densely pubescent, the lobes triangular, ovate, acute, about as long as the yellow petals. Fruit globose, about ⅓′ in diameter.