Leaves cuneate-obovate, rhombic-obovate or cuneate-oblong, acute or rounded at apex, usually tipped with a cartilaginous mucro, gradually narrowed at base, and entire, with thickened revolute margins, scurfy when they unfold, and at maturity thick and firm, pale green, smooth and shining or sometimes obscurely lepidote above, covered below with ferrugineous or pale scales, 1′—3′ long and ¼′—1½′ wide, with a prominent midrib and primary veins; appearing in early spring and persistent until the summer or autumn of their second year; petioles short, thick, much enlarged at base. Flowers ⅛′ in diameter, chiefly produced on branches of the year or occasionally on those of the previous year, opening from February until April when the leaves are fully grown, on slender recurved pedicels much shorter than the leaves, in crowded axillary short-stemmed or sessile ferrugineous-lepidote fascicles, with minute acute deciduous bracts and bractlets; calyx 5-lobed, with acute lobes, covered on the outer surface with ferrugineous scales, and about one third as long as the white pubescent corolla, with short reflexed acute teeth slightly thickened and ciliate on the margins; filaments shortened by a conspicuous geniculate fold in the middle; ovary coated with thick white tomentum; style stout, as long or a little longer than the corolla. Fruit on a stout erect stem, oblong, 5-angled, ¼′ long; seed pale brown.
A tree, occasionally 20°—30° high, with a slender crooked or often prostrate trunk sometimes 10′ in diameter, thin rigid divergent branches forming a tall oblong irregular head, and slender branchlets coated when they first appear with minute ferrugineous scales and covered in their second year with glabrous or pubescent light or dark red-brown bark smooth or exfoliating in small thin scales. Winter-buds minute, acute, and covered with ferrugineous scales. Bark of the trunk ⅛′—¼′ thick, divided into long narrow ridges by shallow longitudinal furrows, reddish brown and separating into short thick scales. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained although not strong, light brown tinged with red, with thick lighter colored sapwood.
Distribution. Hummocks and sandy woods; coast region of South Carolina and Georgia, northern Florida to the centre of the peninsula, the shores of Tampa Bay, and to the neighborhood of Apalachicola (Franklin County); in the United States arborescent in the rich soil of the woody hummocks rising in the sandy Pine-covered coast plain, and as a low shrub in the dry sandy sterile soil of Pine-barrens; in the West Indies and Mexico.
6. ARBUTUS L.
Trees or shrubs, with astringent bark exfoliating from young stems in large thin scales, smooth terete red branches, and thick hard roots. Leaves petiolate, entire or dentate, obscurely penniveined, persistent. Flowers on clavate pedicels bibracteolate at base from the axils of ovate bracts, in simple terminal compound racemes or panicles, with scarious scaly persistent bracts and bractlets; calyx free from the ovary, 5-parted nearly to the base, the divisions imbricated in the bud, ovate, acute, scarious, persistent; corolla ovoid-urceolate, white, 5-toothed, the teeth obtuse and recurved; stamens 10, shorter than the corolla; filaments subulate, dilated and pilose at base, free, inserted in the bottom of the corolla; anthers short, compressed laterally, dorsally 2-awned, the cells opening at the top internally by a terminal pore; ovary glandular-roughened, glabrous or tomentose, sessile or slightly immersed in the glandular 10-lobed disk, 5 or rarely 4-celled; style columnar, simple, exserted; stigma obscurely 5-lobed; ovules attached to a central placenta developed from the inner angle of each cell, amphitropous. Fruit drupaceous, globose, smooth or glandular-coated, 5-celled, many-seeded; flesh dry and mealy; stone cartilaginous, often incompletely developed. Seeds small, compressed or angled, narrowed and often apiculate at apex; seed-coat coriaceous, dark red-brown, slightly pilose; embryo axile in copious horny albumen, clavate; radicle terete, erect, turned toward the hilum.
Arbutus with ten or twelve species inhabits southern and western North America, Central America, western, southern and eastern Europe, Asia Minor, northern Africa, and the Canary Islands. Three species occur within the territory of the United States. Arbutus produces hard close-grained valuable wood often made into charcoal, used in the manufacture of gunpowder. The fruit possesses narcotic properties, and the bark and leaves are astringent.
Arbutus is the classical name of the species of southern Europe.
CONSPECTUS OF THE SPECIES Of THE UNITED STATES.
Bark of old trunks dark red-brown. Ovary glabrous; leaves oval or oblong.1. [A. Menziesii] (B, G). Ovary pubescent; leaves oval, ovate, or lanceolate.2. [A. texana] (C). Bark of old trunks ashy gray; ovary glabrous, conspicuously porulose; leaves lanceolate or rarely narrow-oblong.3. [A. arizonica] (H).