RHAMNACES. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 23 
CONDALIA. 
FLowers perfect; calyx 5-lobed, the lobes valvate in estivation; petals 0; ovary 
immersed in the disk, free, 1 to 2-celled; ovules solitary. Fruit drupaceous, 1 rarely 
2-celled, 1-seeded. 
Condalia, Cavanilles, Anal. Hist. Nat. i. 39. — Brongniart, Gen. 71. — Gray, Gen. Jil. ii. 171. — Bentham & Hooker, 
Mém. Rhamnées, 48. — Endlicher, Gen. 1096. — Meisner, Gen. i. 376. — Baillon, Hist. Pl. vi. 82. 
Small trees or shrubs, usually glabrous, with rigid spinescent branches. Leaves alternate, subses- 
sile, obovate or oblong, entire, feather-veined ; stipules minute, deciduous. Flowers axillary, solitary or 
fascicled, short-pediceled, greenish white, mimute. Calyx persistent, with a short broadly obconical tube 
and ovate acute membranaceous spreading lobes. Disk fleshy, flat, shghtly five-angled, adnate to and 
filling the tube of the calyx and surrounding the free base of the ovary. Stamens five or rarely four, 
inserted on the free margin of the disk between the lobes of the calyx; filaments slender, subulate, 
incurved, shorter than the calyx-lobes ; anthers introrse, attached at the middle, two-celled, the contigu- 
ous cells opening longitudinally. Ovary conical, one or sometimes two-celled by the development of a 
false partition, and gradually contracted into a short thick style; stigma two or three-lobed; ovules 
solitary, ascending from the base of the cell, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle inferior. Fruit 
ovoid or subglobose, rarely imperfectly two-celled, supported by the tube of the calyx, and crowned with 
the remnants of the style; sarcocarp thin and fleshy; the putamen thick, crustaceous. Seed compressed 
or subglobose ; testa thin and smooth. Embryo surrounded by a thin layer of fleshy albumen; cotyle- 
dons oval, flat; radicle short, inferior, next the hilum. 
Condalia is confined to the New World, and is widely distributed from western Texas and southern 
California to Patagonia and Brazil. The type of the genus, Condalia microphylla,’ is a spiny under- 
shrub of Chile. Two species inhabit Brazil,’ and one is known to occur in Patagonia.’ Three species 
belong to the arid region of northern Mexico and the adjacent portions of the United States. Of these, 
Condalia obovata is a small tree; the others, C. spathulata* and C. Jlexicana,’ are low many-branched 
spinescent shrubs. 
Condalia has few economic uses. The bark of the Brazilian C. infectoria is rich in tannin, and is 
used in dyeing.© The fruit of C. obovata, the capulin of the Mexicans, is sometimes eaten by the 
inhabitants of Nuevo Leon. 
The name of Antonio Condal,’ a Spanish physician of the last century, is preserved by that of this 
genus. 
1 Cavanilles, Anal. Hist. Nat. i. 39, t. 4; Icon. vi. 16, t. 525. — 7 Of Antonio Condal nothing is known beyond the fact that he 
De Candolle, Prodr. ii. 28. was a native of Barcelona, and that when very young he was 
2 Reissek, Martius Fl. Brasil. xi., i. 90, t. 24, f. 5, 6, t. 28. attached to the scientific expedition sent in 1754 by the Spanish 
8 Gray, Bot. N. Pacific Explor. Exped. i. 275. government to explore its South American possessions, as assistant 
4 Gray, Pl. Wright. i. 32 (Smithsonian Contrib. iii.).— Hemsley, to the Swedish botanist, Peter Loefling, who died two years later at 
Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. i. 196.— Trelease, Trans. St. Louis Acad. v. the Mission of Merercuri, near Cumana. (For an account of Peter 
362. Loefling and his travels, see Bossu, Travels through Louisiana, Eng- 
5 Scheele, Linnea, xv. 471. — Hemsley, /. c. — Trelease, J. c. lish ed. ii. 71.) 
® Baillon, Hist. Pl. vi. 70. 
