44
JUGLANDACE2E.
usually from an incli and a quarter to an inch and a half long, with a thin brittle shell, thin paperywalls, and a low basal ventral partition. The seed is bitter, bright red-brown, flattened, two-lobed atthe apex, with lobes about as long as the short point of their connective, rounded and slightly dividedat the base, obscurely grooved on the inner face, lobed by two longitudinal grooves on the outer face,and deeply penetrated by the prominent reticulated folds of the inner surface of the wall of the nut.
Hicoria Texana grows on the bottom-lands of the streams and in the low wet woods borderingthe prairies of eastern Texas , where it is common in the Gulf region for a distance of from one hundredto one hundred and fifty miles from the coast.
The wood is close-grained, tough and strong, and light red-brown, with pale brown sapwood. 1 Thenuts are not eaten even by hogs, and remain on the ground through the winter.
First made known by Le Conte 2 from a tree cultivated in Georgia, and afterwards collected byCharles Wright 3 in Texas in 1848 or 1849, Hicoria Texana was confounded by American botanistswith the allied Hicoria Pecan until Mr. B. F. Bush rediscovered it at Columbia on the Brazos Biver in1899, and, attracted by the peculiar flattened nuts, pointed out its true characters.
1 The specimen cut by Mr. Bush for the Jesup Collection ofNorth American Woods in the American Museum of Natural His tory , New York , is twenty-six inches in diameter inside the barkand one hundred and twenty-three years old. The sapwood is fourand five eighths inches in thickness, with fifty-three layers ofannual growth.
2 John Eatton Le Conte (February 22, 1784-November 21,1860) was born near Shrewsbury, New Jersey , of a Huguenot family, his ancestor William, who left Normandy on the revocationof the edict of Nantes , having settled in New Jersey about theyear 1692. John Le Conte and his brother Louis became interestedin the study of natural history, and as young men spent severalyears in Georgia, where they had charge of a plantation belongingto their father and where they established a botanical garden. In1817 John Le Conte entered the United States army as a captainof topographical engineers, and at the end of ten years receivedthe brevet rank of major. His health having become seriouslyimpaired during a military expedition to the St. John’s River in
Florida , he visited Paris in 1827, and five years later, resigninghis commission in the army, settled in New York , where he re-mained until 1862, and then moved to Philadelphia , where he died.Le Conte published a number of papers on botany and zoology,principally in the Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History of NewYork and in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences ofPhiladelphia. Of his botanical papers the most important are onThe Species of Paspalum of the United States , published in 1820, onUtricularia, Gratiola, and Ruellia, published in 1824, on Tillandsiaand Viola, published in 1826, on Pancratium, published in 1828, onThe Vines of North America , published in 1852-63, on Magnoliapyramidata, published in 1854-55, and on Nicotiana , published in1859. His large herbarium was presented to the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences in 1852.
Lecontea, a genus of Madagascar Rubiacese, was dedicated byAchille Richard to this refined, scholarly, and liberal man. (SeeAsa Gray , Bot. Gazette, viii. 197.)
8 See i. 94.
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE.
Plate DCCXIX. Hicoria Texaxa.
1. A flowering branch, natural size.
2. A staminate flower, rear view, enlarged.
3. A staminate flower, front view, enlarged.
4. An anther, enlarged.
5. A pistillate flower, enlarged.
6. End of a fruiting branch, natural size.
7. A nut, natural size.
8. Cross section of a nut, natural size.
9. A young leaf, natural size.
10. A winter branchlet, natural size.