Leaves oblong-obovate, narrowed and acute or rounded and rarely slightly emarginate at apex, cuneate at base, entire, covered above with matted pale hairs and densely below with snow white pubescence when they unfold, and at maturity coriaceous, dark yellow-green, lustrous and glabrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 1¼′—3′ long and ⅓′—1¼′ wide, with slightly revolute margins, a slender yellow midrib glabrous or slightly pubescent below toward the base and conspicuous reticulate veinlets, deciduous; petioles slender pubescent early in the season, becoming glabrous. Flowers opening from the middle of June to the middle of July, on villose pedicels, becoming sometimes nearly glabrous in the autumn, ⅛′—¼′ in length; calyx pale green, villose-pubescent, its lobes ovate, ciliate on the margins, shorter than the lobes of the corolla, their appendages lanceolate; staminodia rounded at apex, longer than the corolla-lobes. Fruit ripening in September, subglobose to oblong-obovoid, ¼′—⅓′ long and ¼′—⅓′ in diameter; seed oblong, rounded at the ends, about ⅖′ long.
A tree, in favorable positions 20°—25° high, with spinose branches forming an irregular open head, and slender often zigzag red-brown lustrous branchlets, the lateral branchlets often ending in stout spines; more often an irregularly branched shrub 10°—15° high, spreading on the banks of streams into great thickets. Bark of the trunk thick, pale and dark gray, rough and scaly, exfoliating in large scales.
Distribution. Texas, dry limestone cliffs and cañon bottoms and by streams dry during a large part of the year, valley of the upper Guadalupe River (Comal, Kendall and Kerr Counties) to the valley of the Rio Grande (Uvalde County), and northward to the valley of the upper Brazos River (Palo Pinto County); in Cohahuila (near Saltillo).
4. [Bumelia lycioides] Gærtn. f. Ironwood. Buckthorn.
Leaves elliptic to oblanceolate, acute, acuminate, or rarely rounded at apex, gradually narrowed at base, covered when they unfold especially below with silky villose pubescence, soon glabrous, and at maturity bright green and glabrous on the upper surface, light green and sometimes coated on the lower surface with pale pubescence, thin and rather firm, finely reticulate-venulose, 3′—6′ long and ½′—2′ wide, with a pale thin conspicuous midrib sometimes slightly pubescent below near the base, deciduous in the autumn; petioles slender, slightly grooved, mostly pubescent early in the season, usually becoming glabrous, ½′—1′ in length. Flowers appearing at midsummer on slender glabrous pedicels ½′ long, in crowded many-flowered fascicles; calyx glabrous, ovoid-campanulate, with rounded lobes rather shorter than the corolla; staminodia broad-ovate, denticulate, nearly as long as the narrow appendages; ovary ovoid, slightly hairy toward the base only, gradually contracted into a short thick style. Fruit ripening and falling in the autumn, ovoid or obovoid, about ⅔′ in length; flesh thick; seed short-oblong to subglobose, rounded at apex, nearly ¼′ long, with a pale conspicuous hilum.
A tree, 25°—30° high, with a short trunk rarely more than 6′ in diameter, stout flexible branches usually unarmed or furnished with short stout slightly curved spines occasionally developing into leafy spinescent branches, and short thick spur-like lateral branchlets slightly puberulous when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous, light red-brown, rather lustrous, and marked by numerous pale lenticels, and in their second year dark or light brown tinged with red or ashy gray. Winter-buds minute, obtuse, nearly immersed in the bark, with pale dark brown glabrous scales. Bark of the trunk thin, light red-brown, the generally smooth surface broken into small thin persistent scales. Wood heavy, hard, not strong, close-grained, light brown or yellow, with thick lighter colored sapwood.
Distribution. Usually in low moist soil on the borders of swamps and streams; rocky bluffs of the Ohio River near Cannelton, Perry County, southern Indiana, southern Illinois (Hardin, Pope and Pulaski Counties), to southeastern Missouri (Butler County) and to western Kentucky, western and central Tennessee, central Mississippi and northern Louisiana (West Feliciana Parish); and through western Arkansas to the coast region of eastern Texas (Beaumont, Jefferson County, and Columbia, Brazoria County); central Alabama; Florida southward to St. Mark’s, Wakulla County, and to Taylor, Alachua and Volusia Counties, and to northwestern Georgia (Catoosa County), and the valley of the Savannah River in Georgia and South Carolina, and northward through eastern North Carolina to southeastern Virginia (Norfolk County).