The Buckeyes 



a shade, and in some regions is stripped of its foliage by caterpillars 

 covered with tufts of white hairs the larvae of the tussock moth. 

 Few people who take thought will choose this tree when elms and 

 hard maples can be had for planting. 



Family Sapindace.^ 



Some interesting relatives of the buckeyes are to be found 

 in the soapberry family, which comprises over one hundred 

 genera, chiefly tropical plants. The leaves are alternate, 

 and the fruits are drupes or capsules. Five deserve mention 

 here. 



The Spanish Buckeye (Ungnadia speciosa, Endl.) is a 

 small tree with alternate ash-like leaves and profuse clusters of 

 rose-coloured flowers. It grows on cafion sides and along streams 

 in Texas and New Mexico. Few trees surpass it in beauty when 

 blooming. The fruit is shaped like an inverted top, deeply 

 3-lobed, and contains three shiny seeds smaller than buck- 

 eyes. 



The Soapberry (Sapindus Saponaria, Linn.) has the dis- 

 tinction of bearing "sope berries like a musket ball that washeth 

 as white as sope." So writes an early explorer of southern 

 Florida. The berries produce a good lather in water. The 

 Asiatic sort have long been used for washing silks and rare woollen 

 fabrics, such as cashmere shawls. The stem of the ash-like 

 leaf is winged with a narrow, leaf-like web throughout its length, 

 as is that of our familiar smooth sumach of the roadside 

 thickets. 



The "Wild China Tree {Sapindus marginatus, Willd.) A 

 tree of medium size which grows from Louisiana to Kansas and 

 southern Mexico, has leathery leaves with wingless stems, and 

 yellow berries which have the same saponaceous principle. This 

 tree is especially valuable for its wood, which is tough and hard, 

 and divides into plates, or annual layers. These are separated, 

 stripped, and woven into baskets to use in gathering the cotton 

 crop. 



The Ironwood, or Inkwood {Exoihea paniculala, Radlk.), 

 grows on the southeast coast of Florida. It is a small tree whose 

 hard red wood is used for piles and boats, because it seems to be 

 immune from the attacks of the ship-worm. Its leaves have 



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