Leaves revolute in the bud, oval, acute or contracted into a short broad point or sometimes rounded at apex, abruptly cuneate at base, thick and coriaceous, bright blue-green on the upper surface and covered on the lower surface and on the petiole with brilliant copper-colored pubescence, 2′—3′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, with a broad prominent midrib deeply impressed on the upper side and numerous straight veins arcuate hear the margins; petioles stout, ½′—⅔′ in length. Flowers appearing in Florida irregularly throughout the year and often found on a branch with ripe or half-grown fruits, on stout pedicels shorter than the petioles, covered like the calyx with rufous tomentum, in few or many-flowered fascicles in the axils of leaves or at the base of lateral branchlets in those of earlier years; calyx divided nearly to the base into broad rounded lobes rather shorter than the tube of the subrotate white corolla with short spreading rounded lobes; ovary 5-celled, pubescent, gradually contracted into a short style crowned by a broad 5-lobed stigma. Fruit usually 1-seeded by abortion, on stems 1′ long, usually only a single fruit being produced from a flower-cluster, ovoid or sometimes nearly globose, dark purple, roughened by occasional excrescences, with a thick tough skin inclosing the juicy sweet mawkish flesh light purple on the exterior, lighter toward the interior, and quite white in the centre; seed narrowed at the ends, ½′ long, covered with a thin light brown coat closely invested with a white glutinous aril-like pulpy mass.
A tree, 25°—30° high, with a tall straight trunk sometimes a foot in diameter, upright branches forming a compact oblong head, and slender slightly zigzag branchlets coated when they first appear with ferrugineous tomentum, becoming in their second year light red-brown or ashy gray and covered with small pale elevated circular lenticels; in sandy soil under the shade of Pine-trees in the Everglade Keys a shrub 6° high or less. Bark of the trunk ¼′ thick, light brown slightly tinged with red, and broken by shallow fissures into large irregularly shaped plates separating on the surface into small thin scales. Wood very heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, light brown shaded with red, with thin lighter colored sapwood.
Distribution. Florida, rich hummocks, from Mosquito Inlet on the east coast to the Everglade Keys, Dade County and to the southern keys, and on the west coast from the shores of the Caloosahatchie River to the neighborhood of Cape Sable; local and nowhere common; on the Bahama Islands, and in Cuba, Porto Rico and Jamaica.
5. MIMUSOPS L.
Trees or rarely shrubs, with stout terete branchlets, small naked buds, and sweet juice. Leaves usually clustered at the end of the branches, with slender inconspicuous transverse veins and minute reticulate veinlets, persistent. Flowers on clavate pedicels from the axils of minute deciduous bracts; calyx 6—8-parted, the divisions in 2 series, those of the exterior series almost valvate in the bud; corolla white, barely longer than the calyx, subrotate, usually dilated at the throat, 6—8-lobed, the lobes furnished at base with a pair of petal-like appendages; stamens as many as the lobes of the corolla; filaments short, dilated; anthers lanceolate, their connectives excurrent, acute, or sometimes aristate at apex; staminodia as many as the lobes of the corolla, scale-like or petaloid, entire, 2-lobed or laciniate; ovary ovoid, hirsute or puberulous, gradually narrowed into a slender style stigmatic at apex. Fruit globose, 1 or 2-seeded, tipped with the much thickened elongated style; skin crustaceous, indurate; flesh thick and dry. Seed oblong-ovoid, slightly compressed; seed-coat crustaceous, chestnut-brown and lustrous; hilum elongated, lateral or minute, basilar; embryo surrounded by thick fleshy albumen; cotyledons flat, thick and fleshy, much longer than the short erect radicle.
Mimusops with thirty or forty species is widely distributed through the tropics of the two hemispheres, a single species reaching the shores of southern Florida. Several species produce hard heavy timber, edible fruits, or valuable milky juices.
The significance of the generic name, from μιμώ and ὄψις in allusion to the shape of the corolla, is not apparent.
1. [Mimusops emarginata] Britt. Wild Dilly.
Mimusops Sieberi Chap., not A. DC.
