LEGUMINOS. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 129 
LYSILOMA LATISILIQUA. 
Wild Tamarind. 
LEAVES with 2 to 4 pairs of pinne; leaflets in 10 to 20 pairs, obliquely ovate or 
oblong. 
Lysiloma latisiliqua, Bentham, Zrans. Linn. Soc. xxx. dolle, Prodr. ii. 467. — Macfadyen, #7. Jam. 318. — May- 
534 (Rev. Mim.) —Chapman, Fl. ed. 2, Suppl. 619. — cock, Fl. Barb. 403. — Don, Gen. Syst. ii. 418. — Nuttall, 
Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 64. Sylva, ii. 34, t. 53. 
Mimosa latisiliqua, Linnzus, Spec. 519.— Lamarck, Dict. LL. Bahamensis, Bentham, Hooker Lond. Jour. Bot. iii. 
i. 11. — Persoon, Syn. ii. 265. 82.— Dietrich, Syn. v. 506. 
Acacia latisiliqua, Willdenow, Syec. iv. 1067. — De Can- Acacia Bahamensis, Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. Ind. 221. 
A tree, forty or fifty feet in height, with a trunk two or three feet in diameter and stout spreading 
branches which form a wide flat head. The bark of the trunk varies from a quarter to half of an inch 
in thickness; it is dark brown, and separates into large plate-like scales, or, on the trunks of young 
vigorous trees and on the branches, is smooth and light gray tinged with pink. The branchlets are 
glabrous or somewhat pilose, conspicuously verrucose, and, like the leaf-stalks, bright red-brown when 
they first appear, becoming pale or light reddish brown in their second year. The leaves are four or 
five inches long, glabrous or sometimes slightly puberulous, and are borne on slender petioles an inch 
in length, marked near the middle with a conspicuous elevated gland. The stipules are foliaceous, half 
an inch long, ovate, acute, auricled and semicordate at the base, usually caducous but sometimes per- 
sistent until after the opening of the flowers. The pinne are short-stalked and twenty to forty-foliolate, 
with petioles enlarged and slightly glandular at the base. The leaflets are obliquely ovate or oblong, 
obtuse or acute, more or less unequal at the base by the greater development of one of the sides, sessile 
or shortly petiolulate, entire, reticulate-veined, light green, and paler on the lower than on the upper 
surface. The peduncles are from three quarters of an inch to an inch and a half long and are solitary 
or fascicled in the axils of the upper leaves, or are arranged in short terminal racemes ; their bracts 
and bractlets are acute, membranaceous, and caducous, the former a third of an inch and the latter 
about a twelfth of an inch in length. The flower-heads, which in Florida appear early in April, are 
covered before the flowers open with thick pale tomentum, and after the exsertion of the stamens are 
two thirds of an inch in diameter. The calyx is broadly five-toothed, pilose on the outer surface espe- 
cially above the middle, a twelfth of an inch long or half as long as the petals, which are united for 
two thirds of their length and reflexed at the apex. There are about twenty stamens, which are at 
least twice as long as the petals and are united for a quarter of their length into a slender tube. The 
legumes ripen in the autumn and remain on the branches until after the flowering period of the 
following year ; they are four or five inches long, an inch broad, acute at the apex, and borne on stems 
an inch or two in length two or three together from a common peduncle abruptly and conspicuously 
enlarged at the apex. The valves are thin and papery, bronzy green when fully grown, and ultimately 
dark red-brown ; they separate slowly from the margins, and probably not until after the pods have lain 
for some time on the ground, the exocarp first gradually breaking away from the endocarp. The seeds 
are half an inch long, oval or obovate, and compressed, with a thin lustrous dark brown coat. 
Lysiloma latisiliqua grows in Florida on Key Largo, Elliott’s, Plantation, and Boca Chica Keys, 
although it is not common on any of these islands. It inhabits the Bahamas and many of the West 
India Islands and perhaps Venezuela.’ 
1 Bentham, Trans. Linn. Soc. xxx. 534 (Rev. Mim.) 
