Leaves acuminate, pubescent below; petioles up to ½′ in length; inflorescence and young branchlets covered with silky rufous tomentum.1. [C. pallens] (D). Leaves abruptly pointed or obtuse at apex, glabrous; petioles not more than ⅙′ in length; inflorescence and young branchlets glabrous.2. [C. Zuzygium] (D).
1. [Calyptranthes pallens] Griseb.
Chytraculia Chytraculia Sudw.
Leaves oblong or oblong-ovate, acuminate at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, pellucid-punctate above, marked with dark glands below, when they unfold pink or light red and covered with pale silky hairs, and at maturity coriaceous, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, coated with pale pubescence on the lower surface, 2½′—3′ long and ½′—¾′ wide, with a broad midrib orange-colored beneath; petioles stout, ⅓′—½′ in length. Flowers sessile, ⅛′ long, in long-stalked many-flowered clusters 2½′—3′ long and wide, covered like their bracts and the flower-buds with silky rufous pubescence, with slender divaricate branches, the ultimate divisions 3-flowered; petals 0. Fruit short-oblong or nearly globose, dark reddish brown and puberulous, with thin dry flesh; seeds short-oblong, rounded at the ends.
A tree, in Florida 20°—25° high, with a trunk 3′—4′ in diameter, small branches forming a narrow head, and slender branchlets at first wing-angled between the nodes and coated with short rufous silky tomentum, becoming in their second or third year terete, thickened at the nodes, light gray tinged with red and covered with small thin scales. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, with a generally smooth light gray or almost white surface occasionally separating into irregular plate-like scales. Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, brown tinged with red, with lighter colored sapwood of 30—40 layers of annual growth.
Distribution. Florida, shores of Lake Worth, in the neighborhood of Bay Biscayne, Dade County, and on Big Pine Key, Elliott’s Key, Key Largo and Key West; on the Bahama Islands, on many of the Antilles and in southern Mexico.
2. [Calyptranthes Zuzygium] Sw.
Leaves elliptic, abruptly or gradually narrowed into a blunt point or obtuse at apex, cuneate at base, entire, covered with minute pellucid dots, glabrous, dark yellow-green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 1½′—2¼′ long and ⅗′—1¼′ wide, with a broad low midrib and slender primary veins arcuate and connected within the slightly revolute somewhat undulate margins; petioles deeply grooved, ⅛′—⅙′ in length. Flowers on slender pedicels ⅙′—⅕′ long, in axillary 1—3-branched few-flowered axillary cymes ¾′ long and ½′ wide, on slender peduncles 1′—1¼′ in length, the ultimate divisions of the inflorescence 1—3-flowered; petals wanting; style rather longer than the stamens. Fruit about ⅓′ in diameter.