150 LEGUMINOSAE. 
AMORPHA. False Indigo. 
(Family Leguminosae). 
Shrubs: deciduous. Twigs rath- 
er slender, slightly angled below 
the nodes: pith moderate, round- 
ish, continuous, white. Buds 
rather small, sometimes super- 
posed, ascending, with 2 or 3 ex- 
posed scales. Leaf-scars  alter- 
nate, somewhat triangular-cres- 
cent-shaped, elevated: bundle- 
traces 3: stipule-scars small, at 
the upper angles of the leaf-scars. 
Winter-character references:— 
A. canescens. Hitchcock (3), 12. 
A. fruticosa. Brendel, 27, pl. 3; 
Hitchcock (3), 12,\ 64). 135, f. 40; 
Schneider, f. 82. 
The common lead plant is be- 
lieved by some people to grow 
only where it finds a considerable 
amount of lead in the soil and 
to the extent to which this belief 
is held it is considered indicative of the occurrence of min- 
eral, like Eriogonum in the western silver mountains. Little 
useful dependence is to be placed on such indications, though 
there is some foundation for the credence placed in some of 
them. A paper on such indicative plants was published by 
Rossiter W. Raymond in volume 15 of the Transactions of 
the American Institute of Mining Engineers. 
1. Buds superposed: twigs glabrate: stipule-scars evident. 
(1). A. fruticosa. 
Buds solitary: stipule-scars minute. 2. 
2. Twigs glabrate. A. microphylla. 
Twigs white-woolly. (Lead plant). (2). A. canescens. 
a 
