BIGNONIACEZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 93 
CHILOPSIS. 
FLOWERS perfect ; calyx gamosepalous, closed in the bud, bilabiately splitting in 
anthesis; corolla gamopetalous, 2-lipped, 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in estivation ; 
stamens 4; staminodium 1; disk hypogynous, nearly obsolete; ovary 2-celled ; ovules 
numerous. Fruit a linear woody capsule. Leaves opposite or alternate, linear or 
linear-lanceolate, entire, deciduous, destitute of stipules. 
Chilopsis, D. Don, Edinburgh New Phil. Jour. ix. 261 Mexico (Senate Doc. 1848, Bot. Appx. 94). — Bentham & 
(1823). — Meisner, Gen. 300. — Endlicher, Gen. 712. — Hooker, Gen. ii. 1041. — Baillon, Hist. Pl. x. 46. 
Engelmann, Wislizenus Memoir of a Tour to Northern 
A tree, with slender terete branchlets, buds with several imbricated scales, those of the inner rows 
accrescent, deeply furrowed bark, soft coarse-grained dark-colored wood, and fibrous roots. Leaves 
opposite, alternate, or scattered, involute in vernation, linear, or linear-lanceolate, long-poited, entire, 
three-nerved, the lateral nerves obscure, reticulate-venulose, membranaceous, light green, smooth or 
glutinous, short-petiolate or sessile from an enlarged base. Flowers in short puberulous crowded 
racemes terminal on leafy branches of the year, pedicellate, the slender pedicels produced from the axils 
of ovate acute scarious tomentose deciduous bracts, and bibracteolate near the middle. Bractlets ovate, 
acute, tomentose, deciduous. Calyx gamosepalous, coated with pale tomentum, closed before anthesis 
into an ovoid rounded apiculate bud, splitting to the base into two ovate divisions, minutely toothed at 
the apex, the upper with three, the lower with two, rigid teeth, membranaceous, dark green. Corolla 
white, shaded within and without into pale purple, slightly oblique, enlarged and blotched with yellow 
in the throat, the limb undulate-margined, two-lipped, the upper lip two-lobed, the lower unequally 
three-lobed, the central lobe much longer than the others. Stamens four, inserted in one row near the 
base of the corolla, didymous, introrse, included or slightly exserted; filaments filiform, glabrous, the 
anterior nearly twice as long as the posterior; anthers oblong, attached on the back, two-celled, the 
cells divergent in anthesis, opening longitudinally ; staminodium posterior, linear, acute. Ovary two- 
celled, sessile on the thin nearly obsolete annular disk, conical, glabrous, gradually narrowed into a 
slender style divided at the apex into two ovate flat rounded lobes; ovules numerous, inserted in many 
series on a central placenta, horizontal, anatropous ; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit a slender 
elongated thin-walled capsule, gradually narrowed from the middle to the two ends, splitting longitudi- 
nally into two concave valves. Seeds numerous, inserted in two ranks near the margin of the thin flat 
woody septum free from the walls of the capsule, compressed, oblong, exalbuminous; testa thin, light 
brown, longitudinally veined, produced into broad lateral wings, divided at their rounded ends into 
long fringes of thin soft white hairs. Embryo fillmg the seminal cavity; cotyledons plane, broader 
than long, slightly two-lobed and rounded laterally ; radicle short, erect, turned toward the oblong 
basal hilum. 
The wood of Chilopsis is soft, not strong, close-grained, with many small open ducts, numerous 
medullary rays, and bands of large ducts marking the layers of annual growth. It is brown streaked 
with yellow, with thin light-colored sapwood composed of two or three layers of annual growth. The 
specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.5902, a cubic foot weighing 36.78 pounds. 
Chilopsis was first described in the last century from a plant cultivated in the Botanic Garden at 
Madrid which had probably been obtained from Mexico. In the United States it appears to have been 
