566 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



A tree, 25-35 high, with a straight trunk G'-S' in diameter, separating several 

 feet from the ground into a number of upright branches forming a narrow head, 

 and branchlets coated at first with fine hoary tomentum, becoming glabrous or 

 nearly glabrous in their second year and pale orange-brown; more often a shrub, 

 with low clustered stems. "Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, orange-colored, 

 streaked with red, with thick bright yellow sapwood of 10-12 layers of annual 

 growth. The seeds contain a poisonous alkaloid, sophorin, with strong narcotic 

 properties. 



Distribution. Borders of streams, forming thickets or small groves, in low rather 

 moist limestone soil; shores of Matagorda Bay, Texas, to the mountain carious of 

 New Mexico, and to those of Nuevo Leon and San Luis Potosf; of its largest size 

 in the neighborhood of Matagorda Bay ; south and west, especially west of the Pecos 

 River, rarely more than a shrub. 



2. Sophora affinis, T. & G. 



Leaves deciduous, coated when they unfold with hoary pubescence, 6'-9' long, 

 with slender puberulous petioles, and 13-19 elliptical obtuse or retuse slightly mu- 

 cronate leaflets contracted at the base into short stout pubescent petiolules, entire or 

 with slightly wavy thickened margins, membranaceous, pale yellow-green and gla- 

 brous above, paler and covered with scattered hairs or nearly glabrous below, I'-l^' 

 long, and ^' wide, with prominent orange-colored midribs, slenderprimary veins, and 

 conspicuous reticulate veinlets. Flo"wers ^' long, appearing in early spring with the 

 young leaves, on slender canescent pedicels nearly ^' long, from the axils of minute 

 deciduous bracts, in slender pubescent semipendent racemes, 3'-5^ long, from the 

 axils of the leaves at the ends of the branches ; calyx short-campanulate, abruptly 

 narrowed at the base, somewhat enlarged on the upper side, slightly pubescent. 



especially on the margins of the short nearly triangular teeth; petals shortly 

 unguiculate, white tinged with rose color; standard nearly orbicular, slightly emar- 

 ginate, reflexed, as long and twice as broad as the ovate auriculate wings and keel- 

 petals; ovary conspicuously stipitate, villose. Fruit ^'-3' long, indehiscent, black, 

 more or less pubescent, crowned with the thickened remnants of the style, 4-8- 

 seeded, or rarely 1-seeded and then subglobose, with thin fleshy rather sweet walls, 

 persistent on the branches during the winter; seeds oval, slightly compressed, with 



