sk; pistil none:
fertile flowers larger, solitary, or several sessile in a bracted
cluster; petals 5, small or wanting; calyx minutely 5-toothed.

=Fruit.=--Drupes 1-several, ovoid, blue black, about 1/2 inch long,
sour: stone striated lengthwise.

=Horticultural Value.=--Hardy throughout New England; adapts itself
readily to most situations but prefers deep soil near water. Seldom
offered in nurseries and difficult to transplant unless frequently
root-pruned or moved; collected plants do not thrive well; seedlings are
raised with little difficulty. Few trees are of greater ornamental
value.

[Illustration: PLATE LXXXI.--Nyssa sylvatica.]

1. Winter buds.
2. Branch with sterile flowers.
3-4. Sterile flowers.
5. Branch with fertile flowers.
6. Fertile flower.
7. Fruiting branch.

EBENACEAE. EBONY FAMILY.

=Diospyros Virginiana, L.=

PERSIMMON.

=Habitat and Range.=--Rhode Island,--occasional but doubtfully native;
Connecticut,--at Lighthouse Point, New Haven, near the East Haven
boundary line, there is a grove consisting of about one hundred
twenty-five small trees not more than a hundred feet from the water's
edge, in sandy soil just above the beach grass, exposed to the
buffeting of fierce winds and the incursions of salt water, which comes
up around them during the heavy winter storms. These trees are not in
thriving condition; several are dead or dying, and no new plants are
springing up to take their places. A cross-section of the trunk of a
dead tree, as large as any of those living, shows about fifty annual
rings. There is no reason to suppose that the survivors are older. This
station is said to have been known as early as 1846, at which date the
ground where they stand was grassy and fertile. These trees, if standing
at that time, must assuredly have been in their infancy. The
encroachment of the sea and subsequent change of conditions account well
enough for the present decrepitude, but their general similarity in size
and apparent age point rather to introduction than native growth.

South to Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana; west to Iowa, Kansas, and
Texas.

=Habit.=--One of the Rhode Island trees measured 3 feet 11 inches girth
at the base, and gradually tapered to a height of more than 40 feet (L.
W. Russell). The trees at New Haven are 15-20 feet in height, with a
trunk diameter of 6-10 inches, trunk and limbs much twisted by the
winds. Their branches, beginnin