BARK CHARACTERS OF SOME BAHAMA TREES AND SHRUBS William T. Gillis Departnnent of Biology Hope College Holland, Michigan 49423 and George R. Proctor Science Museum Institute of Jamaica Kingston, Jamaica During visits to the Bahama Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands in pursuit of our work in revising the Bahama Flora, the authors have made collections of wood as well as herbarium specimens. These wood samples have been deposited in the Wood Laboratory at Harvard University. Herbarium voucher specimens for these wood samples have been deposited in the her-baria of the Arnold Arboretum and of the Institute of Jamaica. Because of the diagnostic value of differing bark charac-teristics, we have felt that it would be useful to publish illustrations of some of the wood samples which we have deposited at Harvard to demonstrate these bark patterns. For a number of the species involved, this is undoubtedly the first occasion on which their woods have been placed on permanent file; moreover, this photographic record of the bark characteristics is also the first for a number of the included species. Some of the bark patterns show a natural blotchiness; others are mottled due to the presence of undetermined crustose lichens. Nevertheless the general bark patterns — smooth or furrowed, light or dark — is apparent. All figures except No. ,8 are to the same scale. The sample of Pisaidia pisoipula in Fig. 1 is two inches (5.1 cm) in diameter. The two samples in Fig. 8 are nearly three inches (7.5 cm) in diameter. Of some interest is the difference in bark patterns among members of the same family: Fig. 1 shows (except for Chrysophyllum) members of the Leguminosae; Fig. 4 (with the exception of Evythrox-ylum) all Euphorbiaceae; the three specimens to the right in Fig. 6 iStvumpfia, Erithalis, and Guettarda) are all Rubiaceae. Nomenclature follows Britton and Millspaugh (1920) as modified by Gillis (1973 and 1974) . The degree of hardness varied considerably among the samples. We made no attempt to measure this variation quantitatively. Qualitatively, however, it was evident that" the 201
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