BORRAGINACEZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 13 
CORDIA SBOISSIERI. 
Anacahuita. 
CoroLLa white with a yellow centre. Fruit entirely or partly inclosed in the thin 
many-ribbed tomentose calyx. Leaves oval or oblong-ovate. 
Cordia Boissieri, A. de Candolle, Prodr. ix. 478 (1845). — ii. 366. —Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census 
Torrey, Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 135.— Gray, Syn. Fl. U. S. ix. 114. — Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. ii. 283 
N. Am. ii. pt. i. 180. — Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. (ian. Pl. W. Texas). 
A tree, occasionally twenty to twenty-five feet in height, with a short often crooked trunk six or 
eight inches in diameter, and stout spreading branches which form a low round-topped head; or often 
a shrub sending up from the ground numerous stems sometimes only two or three feet tall. The bark 
of the trunk is thin, gray tinged with red, and irregularly divided into broad flat ridges, the surface 
ultimately separating into long thin papery scales. The branchlets are stout and terete, and when they 
first appear are covered, as well as the young leaves, the branches of the inflorescence, and both surfaces 
of the calyx, with thick rusty or dark brown tomentum, through which short white usually matted 
hairs are scattered ; in their second year the branches are dark gray or brown, slightly puberulous, and 
marked with occasional large lenticels and with the elevated obcordate leaf-scars. The leaves are oval 
or oblong-ovate, acute or rounded at the apex, rounded or subcordate at the base, entire or obscurely 
crenulate-serrate, thick and firm, dark green, minutely rugose and more or less scabrous on the upper 
surface, coated on the lower surface with thick soft pale or rufous tomentum, four or five inches long 
and three or four inches wide, with broad midribs and conspicuous primary veins forked near the 
margins and connected by cross veinlets; they are borne on stout petioles covered with tomentum, and 
are an inch to an inch and a half long, and fall when they are about a year old. The flowers, which 
appear from April until June and are slightly fragrant, are sessile or short-pedicellate, and are produced 
in open terminal dichotomous cymes. The calyx is short-cylindrical or subcampanulate, and conspicu- 
ously many-ridged, with five linear acute teeth, and is about half as long as the tube of the white corolla, 
which is funnel-form, puberulous on the outer surface, and marked in the throat with a large light yellow 
spot; the lobes are rounded, imbricated in the bud, and two inches across when fully expanded. The 
stamens are inserted below the middle of the tube of the corolla, and are composed of slender filaments 
and of ovate-oblong anthers. The ovary is glabrous, and is gradually narrowed into a slender two- 
branched style, the divisions of the branches being stigmatic to their base. The drupe is ovate, an 
inch long, pointed and tipped at the apex with the remnants of the style, lustrous and bright red- 
brown, and is inclosed entirely or partly by the thin fibrous conspicuously rayed calyx, coated on the 
outer surface with thick short pale tomentum, and often split nearly to the base; the flesh is thin, 
sweet, and pulpy, and separates easily from the stone ; this is ovate, long-pointed, smooth, light brown, 
faintly reticulate-veined, and marked with four longitudinal les corresponding with the divisions of 
the ovary and at the apex with a deeply four-lobed thin cap; it is thick-walled, hard, and bony, with a 
deep cavity at the base through which a large cluster of fibro-vascular bundles passes. The seed is 
ovate, acute, and a quarter of an inch long, and is covered with a thin delicate pure white coat. 
Cordia Boissieri inhabits dry limestone ridges, and depressions in the desert, and from the valley 
of the Rio Grande in Texas and from southern New Mexico ranges southward into northern Mexico. 
Comparatively rare and of small size within the territory of the United States, the Anacahuita is exceed- 
ingly abundant and grows to its largest size in Nuevo Leon between the mouth of the Rio Grande and 
