SAPINDACE. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 71 
SAPINDUS MARGINATUS. 
Soapberry. Wild China Tree. 
CALYX-LOBES acute; petals appendaged. Petioles wingless or nearly so. 
Sapindus marginatus, Willdenow, Enum. 432. — Muehl- 
enberg, Cat. 41.— De Candolle, Prodr. i. 607. — Sprengel, 
Syst. ii. 250. — Don, Gen. Syst. i. 665. — Spach, Hist. 
Veg. iii. 54. — Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. i. 255, 685; 
Pacific R. R. Rep. ii. 162. — Nuttall, Sylva, ii. 72, t. 
65.— Engelmann & Gray, Jour. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist. 
v. 241 (Pl. Lindheim. i.). — Gray, Gen. il. ii. 214, t. 180; 
Jour. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist. vi. 168 (Pl. Lindheim. ii.) ; Pl. 
Wright. i. 38 (Smithsonian Contrib. iii.). — Engelmann, 
Wislizenus’ Mem. 96. — Torrey, Emory’s Rep. 138 ; Mar- 
cy’s Rep. 269; Pacific Rh. KR. Rep. iv. 2,74; Bot. Mex. 
Bound. Surv. 47.— Schnizlein, Icon. t. 230, £. 22. — 
S. Saponaria, Lamarck, J7/. ii. 441, t. 307 (not Linnzus). — 
Michaux, Fl. Bor.-Am. i. 242.— Poiret, Lam. Dict. vi. 
663 (in part). — Persoon, Syn. i. 444.— Pursh, Fl. Am. 
Sept. i. 274. — Nuttall, Gen. i. 257. — Elliott, Sk. i. 460. — 
Torrey, Ann. Lyc. N. Y. ii. 172. 
. falcatus, Rafinesque, Med. Bot. ii. 261. 
. acuminatus, Rafinesque, New Fl. 22.— Radlkofer, Sitz. 
Akad. Miinch. 1878, 316, 393. — Watson & Coulter, 
Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 116. 
. Drummondi, Hooker & Arnott, Bot. Voy. Beechey, 281 
(excl. var.).— Walpers, Rep. i. 417. 
. Manatensis, Radlkofer, Sitz. Akad. Miinch. 1878, 318, 
Chapman, Fl. 79.— Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. i. 400 (Shuttleworth in Herb. Rugel). 
214. — Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. xvii. 337.— Sargent, 
Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U.S. ix. 44. 
A tree, forty or fifty feet in height, with a trunk sometimes a foot and a half or two feet in diame- 
The bark of the trunk, 
which is from a third to half an inch thick, separates by deep fissures into long narrow flakes, their 
ter, stout, usually erect branches and minute depressed globular winter-buds. 
surface breaking into small red-brown scales. The branchlets when they appear are slightly many- 
angled, pale yellow-green, and clothed with pubescence. In the second year they are terete, with large 
conspicuously elevated leaf-scars, and are covered with pale gray and usually slightly puberulous bark, 
marked with numerous small lenticels. The leaves are composed of four to nine pairs of leaflets borne 
on slender grooved puberulous petioles sometimes a little winged towards the upper end. They 
appear in March and April, and fall in the autumn or early winter. The leaflets are alternate, obliquely 
lanceolate, and sharply acuminate; on the upper surface they are glabrous and on the lower are usually 
covered with short pale pubescence, although in some Florida forms they are nearly smooth ;' they are 
short-petiolulate, rather coriaceous, prominently reticulated, pale yellow-green, two to three inches long 
and a half to two thirds of an inch broad. The inflorescence, which appears in May or June, is six 
to nine inches in length and five or six inches in breadth, with a pubescent many-angled stem and 
branches. The sepals are acute and concave, with ciliate margins, and are much shorter than the white 
obovate petals, which are rounded at the apex and contracted imto a long claw hairy on the imner 
surface and furnished at the top with a deeply cleft scale with hairy margins. The stamens of the 
sterile flower are exserted, while those of the fertile flower are barely half the length of the petals; the 
filaments are slightly thickened at the base, and are furnished with long soft hairs. The fruit ripens 
in September and October and remains on the branches until the following spring or summer. The 
berries are ovate or rounded, and half an inch in diameter, with thin dark orange-colored semitranslu- 
cent flesh and obovate dark brown seeds, the hilum surrounded by a tuft of pale hairs. 
Sapindus marginatus grows along the Atlantic coast from the valley of the Savannah River in 
Georgia to that of the St. John’s River in Florida; and on the west coast of Florida from Cedar Keys 
to the Manatee River. It reappears west of the Mississippi River and extends from western Louisiana 
1 As collected by Rugel near the mouth of the Manatee River ; the S. Manatensis of Shuttleworth and of Radlkofer. 
