The generic name is in honor of the illustrious physician of the Orient, Avicenna of Bokhara (980—1036).
1. [Avicennia nitida] Jacq. Black Mangrove.
Leaves oblong or lanceolate-elliptic, rounded or acute at apex and gradually narrowed at base, dark green and often lustrous above, hoary-tomentulose below, 2′—3′ long and ¾′—1½′ wide, with slightly thickened revolute margins, a broad midrib thickened and grooved toward the base on the upper side, and oblique primary veins arcuate and joined close to the margins, conspicuous on the 2 surfaces, and connected by prominent reticulate veinlets; appearing irregularly and falling early in their second season; petioles broad, channeled, enlarged at base, and about ½′ in length. Flowers produced continuously throughout the year, their bracts and bractlets nearly ¼′ long, coated with pale or slightly rufous pubescence and about as long as the lobes of the calyx, in few-flowered short spikes on stout 4-angled canescent peduncles ½′—1½′ in length, the lateral peduncles of the ternate terminal cluster subtended by oblong acute bracts ½′ long; corolla ½′ across the expanded slightly tomentose lobes, and nearly closed in the throat. Fruit 1′—1½′ long and ¾′—1′ wide.
A tree, occasionally 60°—70° high, with a short trunk rarely 2° in diameter, spreading branches forming a broad round-topped head, and branchlets at first slightly angled, coated with fine hoary deciduous pubescence, and light orange color, becoming in their second year more or less contorted, light or dark gray, conspicuously marked by the interpetiolar lines and by horizontal leaf-scars displaying a central row of fibro-vascular bundle-scars; usually not more than 20°—30° tall, with a short slender stem, and toward the northern limit of its range a low shrub. Bark of the trunk ¼′—½′ thick, roughened with thin irregularly appressed dark brown scales tinged with red, and in falling displaying the bright orange-red inner bark. Wood very heavy, hard, rather coarse-grained, with numerous medullary rays and eccentric layers of annual growth, dark brown or nearly black, with thick brown sapwood.
Distribution. Florida, St. Augustine to the southern keys on the east coast, and from Cedar Keys to Cape Sable on the west coast; on some of the islands in Mississippi Sound, and on the shore of Terrebonne and Cameron Parishes, and on most of their islands, Louisiana; on the Bahama Islands, on many of the Antilles, and southward to Brazil; and on the west coast of Africa; in the United States of its largest size in Florida just north of Cape Sable; north of Matanzas Inlet on the east coast of Florida usually with stems only a few feet tall.
LXIII. SOLANACEÆ.
Trees, shrubs or herbs, with colorless juice and rank smelling foliage, alternate rarely opposite leaves, without stipules, and perfect regular yellow, white or purple flowers on ebracteolate pedicels in usually dichotomous cymes; calyx campanulate, usually 5-lobed, the lobes slightly imbricated or valvate, usually persistent; corolla gamopetalous, usually 5, rarely 4-lobed, the lobes induplicate-valvate or plicate in the bud; stamens inserted on the tube of the corolla and alternate with and as many as its lobes, equal or unequal; filaments filiform or dilated at base; anthers 2-celled, introrse, opening by apical or longitudinal slits, disk pulvinate or annular, entire, sinuate or 2-lobed or 0; ovary sessile or stipitate on the disk, 2 or rarely 3—5-celled; style slender, terminating in a small or more or less dilated stigma; ovules numerous, attached in many series on the axile placenta, rarely few or solitary, anatropous or slightly amphitropous. Fruit baccate or capsular. Seeds numerous; testa membranaceous or crustaceous; embryo usually slender and curved in fleshy albumen; cotyledons semiterete, shorter than the radicle turned toward the hilum.
A family of 83 genera widely distributed in tropical and temperate regions; often producing fruit with narcotic or poisonous properties, and containing among its useful members the Potato and the Tomato.