Distribution. Tunnel Hill, Johnson County, Illinois, southern Missouri to eastern Oklahoma (Sapulpa, Creek County) and through Arkansas to western Louisiana (near Shreveport, Rapides Parish) and eastern Texas to Milam County.
LIV. THEOPHRASTACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and entire coriaceous persistent leaves. Flowers perfect, regular; calyx campanulate, with 5 sepals imbricated in the bud; corolla 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud, with 5 staminodia attached below the sinuses; stamens 5, attached to the base of the corolla-tube, opposite the lobes; ovary 1-celled, with a simple style and a slightly 5-lobed stigma; ovules peltate, numerous, attached to a central fleshy placenta, amphitropous. Fruit baccate, many-seeded. Seeds immersed in the thickened placenta filling the cavity of the fruit; seed-coat membranaceous; embryo surrounded by thick cartilaginous albumen.
A tropical American family of four genera with one species reaching the shores of southern Florida.
1. JACQUINIA Jacq.
Trees or shrubs, with terete or slightly many-angled branchlets, without a terminal bud, and fibrous roots. Leaves often punctate with pellucid dark glands. Flowers on slender ebracteolate pedicels from the axils of minute ovate acute persistent bracts, in terminal or axillary clusters; calyx slightly ciliate on the margins, rounded at apex, persistent under the fruit; corolla hypogynous, the lobes obtuse and spreading, furnished with 5 petal-like ovate obtuse spreading staminodia; stamens inserted on the corolla opposite its lobes near the base of the short tube; filaments flattened, broad at base; anthers oblong or ovoid, attached on the back above the base, extrorse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary ovoid. Fruit ovoid or subglobose, crowned by the remnants of the persistent style, with a thin crustaceous outer coat, inclosing the thick enlarged mucilaginous placenta. Seeds oblong; seed-coat punctate; embryo eccentric; cotyledons ovate, shorter than the elongated inferior radicle turned toward the broad ventral hilum.
Jacquinia with five or six species is confined to tropical America, with one species reaching southern Florida.
The generic name is in honor of Nicholas Joseph Jacquin (1728—1818), the distinguished Austrian botanist.
1. [Jacquinia keyensis] Metz. Joe Wood. Sea Myrtle.
