LEGUMINOS^ 



553 



eastern borders of the Indian Territory, Louisiana, and the valley of the Brazos 

 River, Texas; and on the Sierra Madre of Nuevo Leon; common and of its largest 

 size in southwestern Arkansas, the Indian Territory and eastern Texas, and in early 

 spring a conspicuous feature of the landscape. 



Often cultivated as an ornamental tree in the northeastern states, and occasionally 

 in western Europe. 



2. Cercis Texensis, Sarg. Redbud. 



Leaves reniform, when they appear light green and slightly pilose, and at matur- 

 ity subcoriaceous, dark green and lustrous on the upper, paler, glabrous or pubescent 

 on the lower surface, and 2'-3' in diameter; their petioles 1^-2' long. Flowers 

 about ^' long, on slender pedicels ^'-f' in length and fascicled in sessile clusters, or 

 occasionally in racemes. Fruit 2'-4' long, ^'-V wide; seeds i' long. 



A slender tree, occasionally 20 or rarely 40 high, with a trunk 6'-12' in diameter, 

 and glabrous branchlets marked by numerous minute white lenticels, light reddish 



brown during their first and second years, becoming dark brown in their third sea- 

 son; more often a shrub, sending up numerous stems and forming dense thickets only 

 a few feet high. Bark of the trunk and branches thin, smooth, light gray. Wood 

 heavy, hard, close-grained, brown streaked with yellow, with thin lighter colored 

 sapwood of 5 or 6 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Limestone hills and ridges; neighborhood of Dallas, eastern Texas 

 to the Sierra Madre of Nuevo Leon; common in the valley of the upper Colorado 

 River; of its largest size on the mountains of northeastern Mexico. 



7. GYMNOCLADUS, Lam. 



Trees, with stout unarmed blunt branches with a thick pith, prolonged by axillary 

 buds, rough deeply fissured bark, thick fleshy roots, and minute buds depressed in 

 pubescent cavities of the bark, 2 in the axil of each leaf, superposed, remote, the 

 lower and smaller sterile and nearly surrounded by the enlarged base of the petiole, 

 their scales 2, ovate, rounded at the apex, coated with thick dark brown tomentum, 

 infolded one over the other, accrescent with the young shoots. Leaves deciduous, 

 unequally bipinnate; pinnae many-foliolulate, with 1 or 2 pairs of the lowest reduced 



