98 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. BIGNONIACE, 
hard woody shell of the large fruit is used for drinking-cups, vases, and all sorts of domestic vessels.’ 
The pulp is emollient and astringent, the seeds are cooked and eaten, the wood is used in cabinet- 
making,” and the juice of the fruit dyes silk black. In Sonora Crescentia alata’ is sometimes culti- 
vated as a shade-tree; and the fruit is used medicinally.’ 
The generic name, which commemorates that of Pietro de’ Crescenzi,’ the distinguished Italian 
writer on agriculture of the fourteenth century, was established by Linneus, who discarded the older 
Cuiete’ of Plumier. 
1 Seemann, Bot. Voy. Herald, 183; Hooker Jour. Bot. and Kew 5 Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. xxiv. 66. 
Gard. Misc. ix. 142. 6 Pietro de’ Crescenzi (1233-1320), a native of Bologna, and one 
? Baillon, Hist. Pl. x. 24. of the earliest scientific writers on agriculture, produced in his 
8 Seemann, Hooker Jour. Bot. and Kew Gard. Misc. ix. 143. time a profound impression on the development of the rural arts 
* Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth, Nov. Gen. et Spec. iii. 158 in southern Europe. His greatest work, Opus Ruralium Commodo- 
(1818). — Kunth, Syn. Pl. dquin. ii. 255.—De Candolle, Prodr. rum, was printed in Augsburg in 1471 and in a French edition in 
ix. 247. — Seemann, I. c. 1486. 
Parmentiera alata, Miers, Trans. Linn. Soc. xxvi. 166 (1867). — ™ Nov. Pl. Am. Gen. 23, t. 16. 
Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. ii. 498. 
