AMERICAN FOREST TREES 555 



bluffs where the tree holds its ground. Their odor calls attention to 

 their presence. The perfume is powerful but pleasant, unless the 

 contact is too close. The pods are from one to seven inches long, and 

 hang on the boughs until late winter. It is not believed that birds or 

 mammels distribute the seeds, as their poison renders them unfit for 

 food. Running water appears to be the principal agent of distribution. 

 The tree reaches its largest size in the vicinity of Metagorda bay, Texas. 

 Among the dry western canyons it is usually a shrub. The small size 

 of this tree stands in the way of extensive use of the wood. It burns 

 well and its principal importance is as fuel. The weight is 61.34 pounds 

 per cubic foot; it is hard, compact, susceptible of a beautiful polish; 

 medullary rays are numerous and thin; color is orange, streaked with 

 red, the sap wood brown or yellow. The wood is worked into a few small 

 articles. 



SOPHORA (Sophora affinis] ranges through portions of Arkansas 

 and Texas. It is popularly supposed to be a locust, and is called pink 

 locust or beaded locust, the first name based on the color of the wood, 

 the last on the appearance of the pod which looks like a short string of 

 beads, sometimes three inches in length, but usually shorter. In early 

 times the pioneers manufactured ink from the pods. It was a fairly 

 serviceable article, but was never sold, each family making its own. 

 This tree's flowers appear in early spring with the leaves. Trunks reach 

 a height of twenty feet and a diameter of eight or ten inches; but the 

 habit of separating into several stems a few feet above the ground lessens 

 the use of the wood, even as posts, for the stems are usually very crooked. 

 The tree's preferred habitat is on limestone bluffs, or along the borders 

 of streams, or in depressions in the prairie where small groves often 

 occur. The wood weighs fifty-three pounds per cubic foot, and is very 

 hard and strong. The annual rings are clearly marked with bands of 

 large, open pores; medullary rays are thin and inconspicuous; color of 

 the heartwood light red, the sapwood yellow. The wood is not sawed 

 into lumber, but is whittled into canes and tool handles. 



GREENBARK ACACIA (Cercidium floridum) is properly named. Its 

 green bark makes up for its scarcity of leaves, and answers the purpose 

 of foliage. The manufacture of the tree's food goes on in the bark, 

 because the leaves are too small to do the work. The foliage resembles 

 that of locust and acacia in form, but the compound leaves are about an 

 inch in length, and the leaflets are one-sixteenth of an inch long. Flowers 

 are small, but the tree puts on three or four crops of them in a single 

 summer. The pods are two inches long. The tree is found in the United 

 States only in the south and west of Texas, where it is occasionally 

 called palo verde. It attains a height of twenty feet and a diameter 



