SCHINUS MOLLE PEPPER TltEE, CHILI PEPPER. 27 



USES. ~No use is made of this tree though its beauty, especially 

 when in flower, should give it rank in ornamental planting.- The 

 wood is doubtless excellent for fuel. 



MEDICINAL PROPERTIES. We do not know that the medicinal 

 properties of this species have yet been studied. 



ORDER ANACARDIACEJE : CHESHEW FAMILY. 



Leaves alternate, simple or compound, without pellucid dots ; stipules none. 

 Flowers polypetalous, small, often polygamous, regular and furnished with 

 bracts ; sepals 3-5, united at the base, persistent ; petals 5 (or sometimes wanting), 

 imbricated in the bud ; stamens 5 or 10, alternate with the petals and perigynous, 

 ovary free, 1-celled and 1-ovuled ; styles or stigmas 3. Fruit a berry or drupe, 

 the seed containing no albumen. 



Trees or shrubs with a milky resinous or gummy acrid juice, which, as well as 

 the exhalations, are often poisonous. 



GENUS SCHINUS, LINNAEUS. 



Leaves evergreen, alternate, unequally pinnately compound, with sessile leaf- 

 lets. Flowers, small, whitish, dioecious, in large axillary terminal bracteate 

 panicles ; calyx short, with 5 imbricated lobes ; petals 5, imbricated, annular disk 

 rather broad ; stamens 10, styles 3; ovary 1-celled with single ovule suspended 

 from above the middle of the cell. Fruit, small globose oily drupes. 



A genus of trees and shrub? of about a dozen mostly tropical American species 

 and the name, Schinus, is the old Greek name, <TXIVOS, of the Mastic-tree, applied 

 to this genus on account of the mastic-like juice which exudes from its various 

 representatives. 



178. SCHINUS MOLLE, L. 



PEPPER-TREE. CHILI PEPPER. FALSE PEPPER. 

 Ger., Pfefferbauin ; Fr., Poivrierfaux ; Sp., Pimientofalso. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS : Leaves 8-12 in. long, of numerous (12 or 15 or more) 

 pairs of remote and irregularly disposed lanceolate sessile entire or remotely ser- 

 rate leaflets, the terminal one longest ; leaves and new growths generally very 

 thinly coated with a gummy exudation. Flowers (in Feb. and Mar. in California) 

 in large pendent thyrses, small yellowish green, terminating the long flexuous 

 branchlets. Fruit small drupes scarcely as large as peas, beautifully rosy-cheeked, 

 of strongly pungent flavor and hanging in long loose clusters. 



The specific name, Molle, is a modification of the Peruvian name of the species 

 Mutti. 



A tree sometimes 3 or -A ft. (1 m.) in diameter of trunk, with rather 

 irregular, wide top, of few large branches and long, gracefully pend- 

 ent branchlets. It is a very handsome tree in all seasons of the year, 

 with its drooping graceful habit and airy evergreen foliage, but when 

 bedecked with its many clusters of light-red fruit hanging from 

 the tip of each branchlet it is of very striking and beautiful appear- 

 ance. The bark of trunk is of a grayish-brown color and with age 

 becomes split into many longitudinal and obliquely connecting, firm, 

 fibrous ridges. 



