LEGUMINOS SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 65 
SOPHORA AFFINIS. 
FLoweErs in axillary racemes; stamens slightly connate at the base, the posterior 
one free. Legume fleshy. Leaves 13 to 19-foliolate, deciduous. 
Sophora affinis, Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. i. 390.— Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 58. — Coulter, Contrib. U. S. 
Leavenworth, Am. Jour. Sci. xlix. 130.— Gray, Jour. Nat. Herb. ii. 72 (Man. Pl. W. Texas). 
Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist. vi. 178 (Pl. Lindheim. ii...— Styphnolobium affine, Walpers, Rep. i. 807. 
Scheele, Roemer Texas, 428.— Sargent, Forest Trees N. 
A small tree, eighteen or twenty feet in height, with a trunk eight or ten inches in diameter, 
dividing into a number of stout spreading branches forming a handsome round head, slender terete 
slightly zigzag branchlets, and thick orange-colored roots. The bark of the trunk is an eighth of an 
inch thick, dark reddish brown, and broken into numerous oblong scales, the surface exfoliating in thin 
layers. The buds are depressed, minute, almost surrounded by the base of the petioles, and are covered 
with broad scales which are coated on the outside with dark brown and on the inside with longer pale 
tomentum, and which are persistent on the base of the growing shoots. The branchlets are at first 
orange-brown or dark green and slightly puberulous, and in their second year are bright green marked 
by narrow brown ridges and with large leaf-scars and occasional dark-colored lenticular spots. The 
leaves, which appear in March and April, are at first coated on both surfaces with hoary pubescence ; 
they are six to nine inches long, with slender puberulous petioles and rachises slightly grooved on the 
upper side. The leaflets are elliptical, obtuse or retuse, slightly mucronate, and contracted at the base 
into short stout pubescent petiolules ; they are entire with slightly wavy thickened margins, membra- 
naceous, pale yellow-green and glabrous on the upper surface, paler and covered with scattered hairs 
or nearly glabrous on the lower surface, and are from an inch to an inch and a half in length and 
half an inch in breadth, with prominent orange-colored midribs grooved on the upper side, slender 
primary veins, and conspicuous reticulated veinlets. The flowers appear in early spring with the new 
growth in slender axillary pubescent semipendent racemes forming conspicuous panicles at the ends of 
the branches, and are half an inch in length or rather longer than the slender canescent pedicels 
produced from the axils of minute deciduous bracts. The calyx is short, campanulate, abruptly 
narrowed at the base, somewhat enlarged on the upper side, and slightly pubescent, especially on the 
margins of the short nearly triangular teeth. The petals are shortly unguiculate, and are white tinged 
with rose-color; the standard is nearly orbicular, slightly emarginate, reflexed, as long and twice as 
broad as the ovate auriculate wings and keel-petals. The ovary is conspicuously stipitate and villose. 
The legumes, which vary from half an inch to three inches in length, are indehiscent, black, and more 
or less pubescent, and are crowned with the thickened remnants of the styles; they are four to eight or 
by abortion one-seeded and then subglobose ; the walls are fleshy, and when fully ripe rather sweet like 
those of the cells inclosing the seeds. The fruit is produced in great abundance, and hangs on the 
branches during the winter. The seeds are oval, slightly compressed, and scarcely strophiolate, with a 
thin crustaceous bright chestnut-brown testa. The cotyledons, which are surrounded by a thin layer 
of horny albumen, are bright green; the radicle is long and incurved. 
Sophora affinis inhabits the region between the valley of the Arkansas River in Arkansas and 
that of the San Antonio in Texas, extending westward in Texas to the upper waters of the Colorado 
River. It is usually found on limestone hills or along the margins of streams or of ravines or depres- 
sions in the prairie, where it often forms small groves with Oaks, Elms, Redbuds, Viburnums, and 
Hawthorns. 
