LEGUMINOSAE. 



141 



PARKINSONIA. 

 (Family Leguminosae). 



Small trees with brown trunk 

 and greenish twigs: evergreen or 

 deciduous. Twigs moderate, 3- 

 sided and more or less striate: 

 pith moderate, roundish, continu- 

 ous. Buds solitary, or superposed 

 with the lower developing into 

 an inflorescence, minute, indis- 

 tinctly few-scaled. Leaf-scars al- 

 ternate, somewhat raised, 3-lobed 

 or broadly crescent-shaped, with 

 3 indistinct bundle-traces; or the 

 spinescent rachis persistent, bear- 

 ing spiny stipules and marked by 

 leaflet-scars below. Leaves, when 

 present, with a few pairs of long 

 narrow pinnae with flat rachis 

 and many small oblong pinnules. 



Like Caragana, Parkinsonia 

 has the rachis of its compound 

 leaf transformed into a persistent 



spine, and on this the former position of the fallen leaflets is 

 marked during the winter by the scars caused by their 

 abscission. 



Glabrous: evergreen. (Jerusalem Thorn). 

 Puberulent: deciduous. (Retama). 



(1). P. aculeata. 

 P. Torreyana. 



