LEGUMINOS. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 119 
ACACIA FARNESIANA. 
Huisache. Cassie. 
FLOWERS in globose heads on clustered peduncles bibracteolate at the apex. 
Legume thick, pulpy, indehiscent. Branchlets armed with persistent spinescent 
stipules. 
Acacia Farnesiana, Willdenow, Spec. iv. 1083. — Nuttall, Mimosa scorpioides, Forskal, Fl. Agypt.-Arab. lxxvii. 
Gen. ii. 80. — De Candolle, Prodr. ii. 461.— Don, Gen. A. pedunculata, Willdenow, Spec. iv. 1084. 
Syst. ii. 414. — Spach, Hist. Vég. i. 80.— Hooker, Com- A. edulis, Willdenow, Hnwm. 1056. 
pan. Bot. Mag. i. 24. — Bentham, Hooker Lond. Jour. Mimosa pedunculata, Poiret, Lam. Dict. Suppl. i. 81. 
Bot. i. 494; Trans. Linn. Soc. xxx. 502 (Rev. Mim.).— Vachellia Farnesiana, Wight, Cat. No. 591; Icon. Pé. 
Dietrich, Syn. v. 494. — Engelmann & Gray, Jour. Bost. Ind. Orient. t. 300.— Wight & Arnott, Prodr. Fl. Ind. 
Soc. Nat. Hist. v. 216, 239 (Pl. Lindheim. i.). — Seemann, 272. 
Bot. Voy. Herald, 282.—Gray, Smithsonian Contrib. Farnesia odora, Gasparini, Descr. Nuov. Gen. Leg. t. 
iii. 67 (Pl. Wright. i.); Proc. Am. Acad. v. 158.—Tor- A.? leptophylla, De Candolle, Cut. Hort. Monsp. 74; 
rey, Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 62.— Chapman, FV. ed. 2, Prodr. ii. 472. 
Suppl. 619. — Sargent, Garden and Forest, ii.400.—Coul- A. Farnesiana, var. pedunculata, Don, Gen. Syst. ii. 
ter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. 99 (Man. Pl. W. Texas). 414. 
Mimosa Farnesiana, Linneus, Spec. 521. — Lamarck, Dict. A. lenticellata, F. Mueller, Jour. Linn. Soc. iii. 147. 
i. 18. — Nouveau Duhamel, ii. 92, t. 28. 
A tree, twenty or thirty feet in height, with a straight trunk twelve or eighteen inches in diameter, 
separating, six or eight feet from the ground, into many long pendulous graceful branches which form 
a round wide-spreading head. The bark of the trunk, which is thin and reddish brown, is irregularly 
broken by long reticulated ridges, and exfoliates in large thin scales. The branchlets are slender, terete, 
or slightly striately angled, glabrous or at first puberulous, and armed with straight rigid terete spines 
developed from the persistent stipules and sometimes an inch and a half long, often much smaller or 
minute. The leaves are alternate on the young branchlets and are fascicled in earlier axils; they are 
short-petiolate with from two to eight but usually four or five pairs of pimne, three or four inches in 
length, and generally somewhat puberulous on the petioles and rachises, and in Texas mostly fall at the 
beginning of winter; the pinne are sessile or short-stalked, remote or close together, and from twenty 
to fifty-foliolate. The leaflets are linear, acute, tipped with minute points, unequal at the base, sessile 
or short-petiolulate, glabrous or puberulous, and bright green on both surfaces. The peduncles are 
axillary, solitary, or most often two or three together; they are rather slender, puberulous, from an 
inch to an inch and a half long, and furnished with two minute dentate connate bracts which form an 
involucral cup immediately under the flower-heads. These are covered with hoary pubescence before 
the flowers open, and at maturity are two thirds of an inch in diameter. The flowers are bright yellow, 
very fragrant, a sixteenth of an inch in length, and are produced durmg the summer and autumn 
from the axils of minute clavate pilose bractlets. The calyx is about half as long as the petals, and like 
them somewhat pilose on the outer surface. The stamens are two or three times as long as the corolla. 
The ovary is shortly stipitate and covered with long pale hairs. The legumes are indehiscent, oblong, 
cylindrical or spindle-shaped, thick, turgid, straight or curved, slightly constricted between the seeds, 
short-stalked, and contracted at the apex into short thick points; they are two or three inches long, 
one half to two thirds of an inch broad, dark red-purple, lustrous, and marked by broad light-colored 
bands along the two sutures which are defined by elevated grooved lines. The outer coat of the walls 
is thin and papery, and incloses a thick pithy pulp-lke substance which surrounds the seeds, each in a 
