Southern Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Bumelia lanuginosa (Michx.) Pers.
- Family: Sapodilla (Sapotaceae)
- Flowering: August-October
- Field Marks: The distinguishing features of this Bumelia are its twigs hairy at maturity and its densely hairy lower surface of its leaves. The hairs are not matted.
- Habitat: Rich wooded bluffs, steep ravines, hammocks, sand hills, moist or dry soils in sandy woods and old fields, and along streams and the margins of swamps.
- Habit: Small tree to 35 feet tall.
- Bark: At maturity breaking up into flaky, red-brown scales.
- Twigs: Young twigs densely hairy; some of the branchlets usually with sharp thorns.
- Leaves: Alternate although sometimes crowded at the tip of branches, simple, oblanceolate to elliptic, rounded or slightly pointed at the tip, tapering to the base, usually smooth and somewhat shiny on the upper surface, densely hairy on the lower surface, without teeth, up to 4 1/2 inches long, up to nearly 2 inches wide.
- Flowers: Several to many in dense, usually sessile umbels in the axils of the leaves.
- Sepals: 5, united at the base, usually hairy, the lobes up to 1/8 inch long.
- Petals: 5, white, united at the base, only slightly longer than the sepals.
- Stamens: 10, 5 of them fertile, 5 of them sterile and resembling small petals, attached to the tube of the petals.
- Pistils: Ovary superior.
- Fruits: Berries obovoid to ellipsoid, up to 1/3 inch long, shiny black, the base of the style usually persistent as a terminal point.
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