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BIGNONIACEAE. 
BIGNONIA. Cross Vine. 
(Family Bignoniaceae). 
Rather soft-wooded climbers. 
Stems subterete or somewhat 
fluted, rather slender: pith pale, 
spongy and finally excavated. Buds 
moderate, solitary, sessile, oblong, 
with about 3 pairs of exposed 
_ seales. Leaf-scars opposite, some- 
what elevated, depressed shield- 
shaped, with 1 C-shaped bundle- 
trace: or the more or less ever- 
green leaves of 2 lance-cordate 
leafiets, not disarticulating and 
ending in coiling tendrils some- 
times thickened at tip: stipule- 
scars lacking, the leaf-bases con- 
nected by transverse ridges. 
The cross-vine is partly ever- 
green where it is native or suc- 
cessfully grown. Its common name 
refers to the intrusion of four 
large rays into its wood,—one of 
the many abnormalities that are seen in lianas, as high- 
climbing stems are called in the tropics. A comprehensive 
account of such stems is contained in Schenck’s Beitrage zur 
Biologie und Anatomie der Lianen, published in 1893. 
Glabrous except about the nodes. B. capreolata. 
