806 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



1. Sambucus Mexicana, DC. 



{Sa7nbucus Canadensis, var. Mexicana, Silva N. Am. v. 88.) 



Leaves 3^'-7' long, with stout pubescent or glabrate petioles usually naked at 

 the base, and 5 ovate-lanceolate leaflets narrowed at the apex into long slender 

 points, sharply serrate, with incurved glandular-tipped teeth, except at the entire 

 wedge-shaped or more or less unequally rounded base, when they unfold more or 

 less covered with pale pubescence, and at maturity dark yellow-green, pubescent, 

 especially on the broad midribs and primary veins, or nearly glabrous, thick and 

 firm, 1^-6' long, ^'-2^' wide, increasing in size from the base to the apex of the 

 leaf, their petiolules slender, that of the terminal leaflet sometimes ^' long and 

 much longer than those of the lateral leaflets; stipels on vigorous shoots sometimes 



^' long, ovate, acute, serrate, and on fertile branches subulate or oblong, much smaller 

 and often 0. Flowers ^' in diameter, appearing from March to July, in flat pubes- 

 cent long-branched cymes 6'-8' in diameter; calyx 5-lobed; corolla rotate, 5-parted, 

 creamy white, with ovate-oblong divisions rounded at the apex. Fruit 1' in diameter, 

 nearly black, lustrous, rather juicy. 



A tree 25-30 high, with a short trunk often abruptly enlarged at the base and 

 sometimes a foot in diameter, stout spreading branches forming a compact round- 

 topped head, and branchlets light green when they first appear and more or less 

 covered with pale pubescence, or glabrate or sometimes coated with canescent 

 tomentum, and at the end of their first year pale, or light brown tinged with red, 

 and roughened by elevated lenticels. Bark of the trunk about |' thick, the light 

 brown surface tinged with red and broken into long narrow horizontal ridge-like 

 scales. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light brown, with thin lighter-colored sap- 

 wood of two or three layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Bottom-lands in moist gravelly loam ; valley of the Nueces River, 

 through western Texas, and southern New Mexico and Arizona to southern Califor- 

 nia and Lower California, and southward through Mexico to Central America, and 

 on the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Plumas County, California. 



Often planted in northern Mexico and in Lower California in the neighborhood of 

 houses as a shade-tree, and for the fruit which is eaten by Mexicans and Indians. 



