46 CHLORIS BOREALI-AMERICANA. 



as long as the petioles, though commonly much shorter; the upper 

 ones are smaller, but occasionally ovate instead of lanceolate ; 

 those of the lateral branches are quite minute and inconspicuous, 

 linear or subulate ; and all, though they cannot be called decidu- 

 ous, are apt to fall long before the leaves. The foliage is bright 

 green, paler or glaucescent beneath ; the leaflets about two inches 

 in length. The declined racemes are very loosely flowered ; the 

 terminal ones are eight or ten inches long, and many-flowered ; the 

 lateral short and 10-20-flowered. The inconspicuous bracts re- 

 semble the uppermost stipules, and are somewhat deciduous. The 

 spreading pedicels vary from half an inch to an inch in length. 

 The flowers are one third smaller than in T. Caroliniana. The 

 calyx is glabrous, the lobes or teeth much shorter than the tube, 

 tomentose-canescent inside, the upper one strongly two-toothed. 

 Corolla light yellow ; vexillum slightly two-lobed. The stamens fall 

 with the petals, or soon after, just as in Baptisia. The linear ovary 

 is canescent. The minutely hoary legumes vary from two to three 

 and a half inches in length, though scarcely two lines in breadth. 

 They are quite flat, straight, or slightly curved, scarcely stipitate 

 and quite even when all the (twelve to twenty) seeds ripen ; but, 

 from the abortion of a part, the pods are often constricted, and 

 also narrowed at the base, as if much stipitate. 



The figure is taken from the living plant brought by myself from 

 Table Mountain. This is the very locality assigned by Nuttall to 

 his Baptisia mollis, which he afterwards proposed to call B. fraxini- 

 folia ; but that part of his description which relates to the height of 

 the plant, and its pubescence, is applicable only to the true Podaly- 

 ria mollis of Michaux. 



Tab. VIII. Thermopsis fraxinifolia ; summit of a stem, with the terminal 

 raceme in young fruit ; of the natural size. 



