LEGUMINOSE. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 33 
DALEA. 
FLOWERS in pedunculate spikes or racemes; calyx 5-toothed; standard cordate 
with a free claw; claws of the wings and keel-petals adnate to the staminal tube; 
ovary 2 or rarely 3, sometimes 4 to 6-ovuled. Legume ovate, compressed, generally 
indehiscent. Seed subreniform, usually solitary. Leaves most often unequally 
pinnate. 
Dalea, Linnzus, Gen. 349. — Meisner, Gen. 89. — Endlicher, Cylipogon, Rafinesque, Jour. Phys. lxxxix. 97. 
Gen. 1270. — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. i. 493. — Baillon, Trichopodium, Presl, Bot. Bemerk. 52. 
Hist. Pl. ii. 285. Asagreea, Baillon, Adansonia, ix. 232; Hist. Pl. ii. 288 
Parosella, Cavanilles, Hlench. Hort. Matrit. (not Lindley). 
Glandular-punctate herbs, small shrubs, or rarely trees. Leaves alternate, unequally pinnate, 
rarely digitately three-foliate or simple; stipules generally minute, subulate, deciduous; leaflets small, 
entire, often stipellate. Flowers purple, blue, white, or rarely yellow, usually sessile, in loose peduncu- 
late spikes or racemes, terminal or opposite the leaves. Bracts membranaceous or setaceous, broad, 
concave above, glandular-punctate. Calyx five-toothed or lobed, the divisions nearly equal, often 
accrescent after anthesis, then sometimes plumose, persistent. Corolla papilionaceous ; petals unguicu- 
late ; standard cordate, free, inserted in the bottom of a tubular disk connate to the calyx-tube, 
rather shorter than the wings and keel with claws adnate to and jointed upon the staminal tube. 
Stamens ten or sometimes nine through the suppression of the superior one, monadelphous, united into 
a tube cleft above and cup-shaped towards the base; anthers uniform, attached on the back near the 
base, often surmounted with a gland, two-celled, the cells opening longitudinally. Ovary sessile or 
short-stalked, contracted into a slender subulate style with a minute terminal stigma rarely slightly 
dilated ; ovules usually two, sometimes three, seldom four to six, attached to the interior angle of the 
ovary, superposed, amphitropous, the micropyle superior. Legume ovate, sometimes conspicuously 
ribbed, more or less inclosed in the calyx, membranaceous, most often indehiscent, one-seeded. Seed 
oblong or reniform, destitute of albumen; testa coriaceous. Embryo filling the cavity of the seed ; 
cotyledons broad and flat ; the radicle superior, accumbently inflexed. 
The genus Dalea is confined to the New World. Nearly a hundred species have been described.! 
More than half are Mexican and tropical and Central American ; ? 
the Andes of Peru,* and two in the Galapagos Islands ;° the remainder belong to the central, western, 
one species occurs in Chile,* ten in 
and southwestern regions of the United States.° Many of the species are herbs, and others are 
low undershrubs ; but in the arid region of the extreme southwestern territory of the United States 
individuals of a peculiar group’ of these plants grow to a considerable size, and among them is one 
which occasionally assumes the habit and attains the size of a small tree.® 
1 De Candolle, Prodr. ii. 244.— Walpers, Rep. i. 652 ; ii. 855 ; 6 Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. i. 307.— Brewer & Watson, Bot. 
v. 513 ; Ann. i. 228 ; ii. 359 ; iv. 482. Cal. i. 141. — Coulter, Man. Rocky Mt. Bot.57; Contrib. U. S. Nat. 
2 Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth, Nov. Gen. et Spec. vi. 480.— Herb. i. 77 (Man. Pl. W. Texas). — Watson & Coulter, Gray’s 
Martens & Galeotti, Bull. Acad. Bruz. x. pt. ii.41.—Schlechtendal, Man. ed. 6, 132. 
Linnea, xii. 290. — Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. i. 236. 7 Xylodalea, Brewer & Watson, I. c. 
8 C. Gay, Fl. Chil. ii. 87 (Psoralea). ® Dalea arborescens (Torrey, Mem. Am. Acad. n. ser. v. 316 
4 Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth, Nov. Gen. et Spec. vi. 484.— [Gray, Pl. Thurber.].— Brewer & Watson, l. c.) was discovered by 
De Candolle, Prodr. ii. 247. — Jameson, Syn. Pl. 4 quator.i.147. Frémont at the eastern base of the San Fernando Mountains in 
5 Hooker f. Trans. Linn. Soc. xx. 225, 226. — Andersson, Stockh. southern California during his second transcontinental journey, and 
Acad. Handl. 1853, 109 (Om Galapagos-Oarnes Veg.). was described by him as “a small tree.’ All attempts, however, 
