150 



LEGUMINOSAE. 



AMORPHA. False Indigo. 

 (Family Leguminosae). 



Shrubs: deciduous. Twigs rath- 

 er slender, slightly angled below 

 the nodes: pith moderate, round- 

 ish, continuous, white. Buds 

 rather small, sometimes super- 

 posed, ascending, with 2 or 3 ex- 

 posed scales. Leaf-scars alter- 

 nate, somewhat triangular-cres- 

 cent-shaped, elevated: bundle- 

 traces 3: stipule-scars small, at 

 the upper angles of the leaf-scars. 

 Winter-character references: 

 A. canescens. Hitchcock (3), 12. 

 A. fruticosa. Brendel, 27, pi. 3; 

 Hitchcock (3), 12, (4), 135, f. 40; 

 Schneider, f. 82. 



The common lead plant is be- 

 lieved by some people to grow 

 only where it finds a considerable 

 amount of lead in the soil and 

 to the extent to which this belief 



is held it is considered indicative of the occurrence of min- 

 eral, like Eriogonum in the western silver mountains. Little 

 useful dependence is to be placed on such indications, though 

 there is some foundation for the credence placed in some of 

 them. A paper on such indicative plants was published by 

 Rossiter W. Raymond in volume 15 of the Transactions of 

 the American Institute of Mining Engineers. 



1. Buds superposed: twigs glabrate: stipule-scars evident. 



(1). A. fruticosa. 

 Buds solitary: stipule-scars minute. 2. 



2. Twigs glabrate. A. microphylla. 

 Twigs white-woolly. (Lead plant). (2). A. canescens. 



