116 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



like old-fashioned gun-wads, lie inside the pod exactly like 

 so many coins rolled up in brown paper. The flowers are 

 produced in clusters, which closely surround the bough of 

 the previous year's growth. They resemble in size, shape 

 and color the largest, deepest colored crab-apple blossoms, 

 but the tree remains apparently in full bloom ten or twelve 

 weeks, a joy to the eye to behold. There is in fact, as in 

 the golden shower, a succession of blossoms, no one lasting' 

 probably more than about ten days. The only name known 

 for the tree in Honolulu is simply Cathartocarpus. I have 

 never learned its true botanical name. 



I have left for the last mention of a genus which must 

 be the first to attract the attention of the stranger, viz.. 

 Poinciana, nearly related to Caesalpinia. One species forms 

 a rather straggling shrub, ten feet high, with thorny branches, 

 and is known commonly as Pride of Barbadoes or as Bar- 

 badoes Flower-fence, the scarlet and orange blossoms, with 

 crimped petals and long exserted stamens forming stately 

 pyramids of bloom, each raceme occupying a month or more 

 in expanding its numerous buds. A second species, Sappan. 

 is very similar, except that the flowers are of an orange yel- 

 low color. 



A third forms a fine tree of medium size, tlie smooth 

 trunk expanded at the base laterally into buttresses cor- 

 ressponding to the principal roots, the foliage arranged in 

 horizontal spreading layers and consisting of regular mimosa- 

 like leaves as beautiful as the fronds of a fern. Were it not 

 for the great coarse pods, twelve to Slixteen inches long by 

 one and one-half inches wide, you would say that in the 

 freshness of its new foliage at the close of the rainy season, 

 it had not peer for beauty among the shade trees of the cit}'. 

 By and by it begins to put on its summer adornments. Here 

 and there burns among the branches a dazzling grow of 



