226. FREMOTODNENDRON CALIFORNICUM FREMONTIA. 21 



A small tree rarely 30 ft. (9m.) in height with wide intricate top of 

 stout rigid branches and trunk sometimes 12 in. (0.30m.) in thickness, 

 covered with very dark brown bark, fissured irregularly into firm 

 ridges and plates which exfoliate in thick scales and fragments. It is 

 more often an intricately branching shrub than a tree. Its profusion 

 of brilliant yellow flowers give it a very characteristic and striking 

 appearance in mid -summer when it may be seen miles away. 



HABITAT. The Fremontia is found on dry gravely soil along the 

 foot hills of the mountains of California, from the western slope of 

 Mt. Shasta and Lake Co., to the southern boundary of the state, 

 attaining its largest size on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada 

 mountains, where, however, it is not very abundant. On the eastern 

 slopes and southward it is more shrubby in habit of growth and 

 abundant in places, forming every extensive thickets. 



PHYSICAL PROPERTIES. The wood of this species is hard, heavy, 

 strong, of close grain and with rather conspicuous medullary rays. 

 The sap-wood is of a creamy white color, the heart- wood of a light 

 reddish brown and finally chocolate brown. Specific Gravity, 0.7142; 

 Percentage of Ash, 1.69; Relative Approximate Fuel Value, 0.7021; 

 Weight of a Cubic Foot in Pounds, 44.50. 



MEDICINAL PROPERTIES. The inner bark of the species is very 

 mucilaginous and used in domestic practice for poultices, as is that of 

 the Slippery Elm ( U. fulva) of the eastern states and from this fact 

 the name Slippery Elm came to be applied to it. 



ORDER LEGUMINOSJE: PULSE FAMILY. 



Leaves alternate, usually compound, entire and furnished with stipules. Flowers 

 with 5 sepals more or less united at the base; petals 5, papilionaceous or regular; 

 stamens diadelphous, monadelphous or distinct and with versatile anthers; pis- 

 tils single, simple and free. Fruit a legume (pod) with mostly albumenless seeds. 



One of the largest and most widely distributed families of the vegetable king- 

 dom, represented in all lands and of great economic importance. 



GENUS ACACIA, NECKER. 



Leaves variable, in the native American species bipinnate with usually small 

 leaflets in many pairs, but in many of the exotic species the leaflets fall away 

 and the petioles expand, becoming phyllodia ; stipules spinescent or inconspicu- 

 ous. Flowers perfect or polygamous, small, generally yellowish or greenish- white 

 in pedunculate globose or cylindrical spikes, each flower in the axil of a minute 

 linear or spatulate bractlet ; calyx campanulate, 4-5-toothed or sometimes divided 

 into distinct sepals, or reduced to hairs, valvate in aestivation ; petals of the same 

 number as the lobes of the calyx, generally more or less united below or rarely 

 wanting ; stamens numerous and indefinite, usually more than fifty, exserted, 

 free or slightly united at base, inserted beneath the ovary, filaments filiform, 

 anthers small, 2-celled, versatile, introrse, longitudinally dehiscent ; ovary sessile 

 or stipitate, two or many-ovuled, contracted into a long slender style with 

 minute terminal stigma ; ovules anatropous. suspended in two ranks from the 

 inner angle of the ovary. Fruit a legume, dehiscent by two valves or indehiscent, 



