140 



LEGUMINOSAE. 



GYMNOCLADUS. Coffee Tree. 

 (Family Leguminosae). 



Large rough-barked tree: de- 

 ciduous. Twigs stout, terete or 

 irregularly 3-sided above: pith 

 large, round, continuous, salmon- 

 colored. Buds superposed in raised 

 silky craters, indistinctly scaly, 

 the end-bud lacking. Leaf-scars 

 alternate, large, irregularly heart- 

 shaped, little elevated: bundle- 

 traces 3 or 5, large, rather indefi- 

 nite and divided: stipule-scars 

 minute and fringed at top, or 

 lacking. 



Winter-character references : 

 Blakeslee & Jarvis, 333, 514, pi.; 

 Brendel, 28, pi. 3; Hitchcock (1), 

 4, f. 11, (3), 13, (4), 136, f. 43- 

 45; Otis, 162; Schneider, f. 13, 33, 

 72, 139. 



Like the ailanthus, Gymnocla- 

 dus presents unmistakable evi- 

 dence of the absence of a true terminal bud on its stout 

 twigs. Von Mohl has published on this abscission in the 

 Botanische Zeitung of 1848 and 1860, and it is figured by 

 Foerste in volume 20 of the Botanical Gazette. The large 

 leaf-scars afford a particularly good opportunity for observing 

 the progressive obliteration of self-healed wounds, and the 

 changes in the leaf-scars in successive years were described 

 by von Mohl in the Botanische Zeitung for 1849. The mechan- 

 ism of leaf-fall is described by van Tieghem and Guignard 

 in the Bulletin de la Societe Botanique de France for 1882. 

 Twigs with whitening epidermis and fine lenticels. G. dioica. 



