88 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. CAPRIFOLIACE. 
SAMBUCUS CANADENSIS, var. MEXICANA. 
Elder. 
Leaves and young shoots more or less pubescent. Fruit destitute of bloom. 
Am. Cent. ii. 1.— Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th 
Census U.S. ix. 93. — Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. 
ii. 155 (Man. Pl. W. Texas). 
Sambucus glauca, Bentham, Pl. Hartweg. 313 (not Nut- 
tall) (1848). — Gray, Brewer & Watson Bot. Cal. i. 278 (in 
part). 
Sambucus velutina, Durand & Hilgard, Jour. Phil. Acad. 
n. ser. iii. 389 (1854); Pacific R. R. Rep. v. pt. iii. 8. 
Sambucus Canadensis, var. Mexicana. 
Sambucus Mexicana, De Candolle, Prodr. iv. 322 
(1830).— Don, Gen. Syst. iti. 487.— Loudon, Arb. 
Brit. ii. 1030. — Gray, Smithsonian Contrib. v. 66 (Pl. 
Wright. ii.) (in part); Brewer & Watson Bot. Cal. i. 
278; Syn. Fl. N. Am. i. pt. ii. 9.— Torrey, Pacific 
RK. R. Rep. iv. 95; Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 71.— 
Rothrock, Wheeler’s Rep. vi. 135. — Hemsley, Bot. Biol. 
A tree, twenty-five to thirty feet in height, with a short trunk often abruptly enlarged at the base 
and sometimes a foot in diameter, and stout spreading branches which form a compact round-topped 
head. The bark of the trunk is a quarter of an inch thick, with a hght brown surface tinged with red 
and broken into long narrow horizontal ridge-like scales. The branchlets, when they first appear, are 
light green, and like the young leaves are more or less covered with pale pubescence, or are glabrate or 
sometimes coated with canescent tomentum; at the end of the first year they become pale, or light 
brown tinged with red and roughened with elevated lenticels. The leaves are usually composed of five 
leaflets, and are borne on stout pubescent or glabrate petioles an inch or an inch and a half long and 
usually naked at the base; the leaflets are ovate-lanceolate, narrowed at the apex into long slender 
points, sharply serrate with incurved glandular-tipped teeth except at the base, which is entire and 
wedge-shaped or more or less unequally rounded on the two sides; at maturity they are dark yellow- 
green, pubescent especially on the broad midribs and primary veins, or nearly glabrous, thick and firm, 
an inch and a half to six inches long, half an inch to two and a half inches wide, increasing in size 
from the base to the apex of the leaf, and borne on slender petiolules which on the terminal leaflet 
are sometimes three quarters of an inch in length and on the lateral leaflets are much shorter; the 
stipels on vigorous shoots are sometimes a third of an inch long, ovate, acute and serrate, or on fertile 
branches, from which they are usually wanting, they are subulate or oblong and much smaller. The 
flowers, which are an eighth of an inch across, are produced in flat pubescent long-branched cymes six 
or eight inches across, and in the valley of the Rio Grande appear from March to July; the calyx 
is ovoid and five-lobed ; the corolla is rotate, five-parted, and creamy white, with ovate-oblong divisions 
rounded at the apex; the style is ovate, thick, and fleshy. The fruit is a quarter of an inch in 
diameter, nearly black, rather juicy and destitute of bloom. 
Sambucus Canadensis, var. Mexicana, is distributed from the valley of the Nueces River in 
western Texas through southern New Mexico and Arizona to southern California; it ranges southward 
through Mexico to Central America, and appears on the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Plumas County, 
California.* It frequents bottom-lands and the margins of streams, and is usually found growing in 
moist gravelly loam. From Sambucus Canadensis,? a common shrub distributed from New Brunswick 
1 The Mexican Elder was found here by Mrs. R. M. Austin, 
whose specimens are preserved in the Gray Herbarium at Cam- 
bridge. 
? Sambucus Canadensis, Linneus, Spec. 269 (1753).— Miller, 
Dict. ed. 8, No. 6.— Du Roi, Harbk. Baumz. ii. 414.— Moench, 
Biume Weiss. 128.— Wangenheim, Nordam. Holz. 115.— Willde- 
now, Berl. Baumz. 355 ; Spec. i. pt. ii. 1494 ; Enum. 328. — Schmidt, 
Oestr. Baumz. iii. 22, t. 142. — Nouveau Duhamel, i. 248. — Michaux, 
Fi. Bor.-Am. i. 181. — Poiret, Lam. Dict. vii. 519. — Pursh, Fl. Am. 
Sept. i. 203. — Roemer & Schultes, Syst. vi. 640.— Elliott, Sk. 1. 
368. — Sprengel, Syst. i. 935.—De Candolle, Prodr. iv. 322.— 
Hooker, Fl. Bor.-Am. i. 279. — Don, Gen. Syst. iii. 437, — Loudon, 
