SAPINDACES. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 65 
UNGNADIA SPECIOSA. 
Spanish Buckeye. 
Ungnadia speciosa, Endlicher, Atakt. Bot. t. 36; Nov. 230**, f. 2, 8. —L’Hort. Franc. 1865, t. 15. — Koch, 
Stirp. Dec. 15. — Torrey & Gray, Pacific R. R. Rep. ii. Dendr. i. 515. — Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. xvii. 337. — 
162. — Walpers, Rep. i. 423; v. 371; Ann. vii. 625. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U.S. ix. 44. — 
Gray, Gen. Jil. ii. 211, t. 178, 179; Jour. Bost. Soe. Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. i. 212. 
Nat. Hist. vi. 167 (Pl. Lindheim. ii.); Pl. Wright. i. U. heterophylla, Scheele, Linnea, xxi. 589. 
38; ii. 30 (Smithsonian Contrib. iii., iv.); Mem. Am. U. heptaphylla, Scheele, Linnea, xxii. 352; Roemer Texas, 
Acad. n. ser. v. 299.— Torrey, Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 432. 
48. — Fl. des Serres, x. 217, t. 1059. —Schnizlein, Icon. t. 
The Ungnadia sometimes grows, under favorable conditions, to the height of twenty-five or thirty 
feet, with a trunk six or eight inches in diameter, dividing, at some distance from the ground, into a 
number of slender upright branches, and covered with light gray bark rarely more than a quarter of an 
inch thick, the surface netted with shallow fissures; or more often a shrub sending up many stems 
from the ground. The branchlets are covered during their first season with short fine pubescence and 
are then light orange-brown ; in their second year they are pale brown tinged with red, glabrous, and 
marked with scattered lenticels. The leaves appear from March to April simultaneously with or just 
after the flowers, and are five to seven inches long, with rather coriaceous leaflets which are dark green 
and lustrous on the upper, and pale or occasionally rufous on the lower surface, three to five inches in 
length and an inch and a half to two inches in breadth. The petiolule of the terminal leaflet is some- 
times a quarter of an inch long, those of the lateral leaflets rarely exceeding an eighth of an inch. The 
flowers, which are arranged in short umbels one and a half or two inches long, are an inch across when 
expanded, and often quite hide the branches for a space of a foot or more. The fruit is two inches 
broad at maturity and opens in October, the empty pods often remaining on the branches until the 
appearance of the flowers the following year. 
The Ungnadia is widely scattered from the valley of the Trinity River in Texas to the Organ 
Mountains of New Mexico, and to the Sierra Madre of Nuevo Leon and the mountains of Chihuahua. 
It occupies the borders of streams, the slopes of limestone hills, and the sides of mountain canons, and 
is most common and reaches its largest size forty or fifty miles from the Texas coast west of the Colo- 
rado River. Farther east and west and in Mexico it is usually shrubby, growing from six to ten feet 
high. 
When its branches are covered with its delicate and beautiful flowers the Spanish Buckeye is one 
of the most attractive and ornamental of the small trees or shrubs of North America. It was introduced 
into cultivation from seed sent in 1848 by Friedrich Lindheimer * to the Botanic Gardens at Vienna and 
at Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is still occasionally cultivated in southern Kurope and in the southern 
Atlantic and Gulf states, where it is perfectly at home and annually produces flowers and fruit.’ 
1 See i. 74. Augusta, Georgia. Later it has been successfully grown by Dr. 
2 Ungnadia speciosa appears to have been first cultivated inthe Charles Mohr of Mobile. 
open ground in the United States by Mr. P. J. Berckmans at 
