LEGUMINOS ZA, 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
133 
PITHECOLOBIUM UNGUIS-CATI. 
Cat’s Claw. 
FLowers polygamous, in globose heads. 
Legumes subtorulose, the valves much 
contorted after opening. Branches armed with rigid persistent spinescent stipules. 
Pithecolobium Unguis-cati, Bentham, Hooker Lond. 
Jour, Bot. iii. 200; Trans. Linn. Soc. xxx. 572 (Rev. 
Mim.) — Dietrich, Syn. v.514.— Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. 
Ind. 226.— Chapman, Fl. 116.— Eggers, Bull. U. 8. 
Nat. Mus. No. 13, 49. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 
10th Census U. S. ix. 64. 
Mimosa Unguis-cati, Linneus, Spec. 517.— Miller, Dict. 
ed. 8, No. 13.— Aublet, Pl. Guwian. ii. 944. — Lunan, 
Hort. Jam. ii. 2. — Descourtilz, Fl. Med. Antil. i. 51, 
t. 11. — Jacquin, Hort. Schoenb. iii. 74, t. 392. 
Inga microphylla, Willdenow, Spec. iv. 1004. — Maycock, 
Inga Unguis-cati, Willdenow, Spec. iv. 1006.— De Can- 
dolle, Prodr. ii. 436.— Don, Gen. Syst. ii. 391.— 
Spach, Hist. Vég. i. 58. — Macfadyen, Fl. Jam. 306. — 
Nuttall, Sylva, ii. 37, t. 54. 
Mimosa rosea, Vahl, clog. iii. 33, t. 25. 
Inga forfex, Kunth, Mim. 52, t. 16. 
Inga rosea, De Candolle, Prodr. ii. 437. 
P. forfex, Bentham, Hooker Lond. Jour. Bot. iii. 199. — 
Dietrich, Syn. v. 514. 
P. microphyllum, Bentham, Hooker Lond. Jour. Bot. iii. 
200. — Dietrich, Syn. v. 514. 
Fil. Barb. 400. 
A glabrous tree, sometimes twenty or twenty-five feet in height, with a slender trunk seven or 
eight inches in diameter and a low flat irregular head; or more often a shrub with many vine-like 
The bark of the trunk is a quarter of an inch thick, reddish brown, and 
The branchlets are slender, somewhat zigzag, at 
almost prostrate stems. 
divided by shallow fissures into small square plates. 
first slightly striately angled, light gray-brown or sometimes dark reddish brown, covered with minute 
pale lenticels and armed with straight persistent rigid stipular spines broad at the base and a quarter of 
an inch in length, or rarely minute. The leaves are persistent and long-petiolate, with a single pair 
of bifoliolate pinnz. The petioles are slender, faintly grooved on the upper side, from half an inch 
to an inch long, furnished at the apex with solitary conspicuous orbicular glands and tipped with the 
minute spinescent rachises. The secondary petioles, which vary from a quarter to half of an inch in 
length and are slightly and abruptly enlarged at the base, are furnished with glands between the short 
stout petiolules of the leaflets ; these are obtuse, orbicular or broadly oblong, very oblique, and obtuse or 
rarely emarginate at the apex ; they are entire, membranaceous, or somewhat coriaceous, reticulate-veined, 
bright green and lustrous on the upper, and paler on the lower surface, and vary from half an inch to 
two inches in length and from half an inch to an inch and a half in breadth. The flowers, which 
Florida first open in March and continue to appear until midsummer, are produced in globular heads 
borne on slender peduncles an inch or an inch and a half long fascicled in the axils of the leaves or col- 
lected in ample panicles at the ends of the branches; their bracts are lanceolate, acuminate, chartaceous, 
a quarter of an inch in length, and early deciduous. The flowers are pale yellow, glabrous or slightly 
puberulous, and with their fully grown purple stamens are half an inch long. The calyx is rather less 
than a twelfth of an inch long, broadly toothed, and a quarter of the length of the acuminate petals 
which barely exceed the tube formed by the union of the filaments. The ovary is glabrous, long-stalked, 
and in the sterile flower minute or rudimentary. The legumes are compressed, slightly torulose, stipitate, 
rounded or acute at the apex, two to four inches long and from a quarter to half an inch broad ; the 
valves are reticulate-veined, thickened on the margins, bright reddish brown, and after opening greatly 
and variously contorted. The seeds are irregularly obovate or sometimes nearly triangular, compressed 
or thickened, and a third of an inch long, the lower portion being surrounded by the enlarged bright 
