

LEGUMINOS^E 593 



Distribution. Now widely spread by cultivation through the tropical and subtropical 

 regions of the two worlds and probably a native of America from western Texas to northern 

 Chili; growing in Texas apparently naturally in the arid and almost uninhabited region 

 between the Nueces and Rio Grande; naturalized and nov covering great areas in the 

 valley of the Guadalupe River near Victoria, Victoria County, Texas. 



Largely cultivated in southern Europe for its fragrant flowers used in the manufacture of 

 perfumery, as an ornament of gardens in all warm countries, and in India as a hedge plant. 



2. Acacia tortuosa Willd. 



Leaves generally less than I' long, short-petiolate, with a slender puberulous rachis 

 and usually 3 or 4 pairs of pinnae; early deciduous; pinnae sessile or short-stalked, remote, 

 with 10-15 pairs of linear somewhat falcate leaflets, acute, tipped with a minute point, sub- 

 sessile, light green, glabrous, ^V -fa' long. Flowers minute, bright yellow, very fragrant, 

 in the axils of clavate pilose bracts, in heads J'-f in diameter, appearing in March with 

 or just before the unfolding leaves, on clustered or solitary slender puberulous peduncles 

 |'-f long, and furnished at apex with 2 minute connate bracts; calyx only about one 

 third as long as the corolla, with short puberulous lobes; corolla puberulous at apex, less 

 than half as long as the filaments; ovary covered with short close pubescence. Fruit 

 elongated, linear, slightly compressed, somew r hat constricted between the seeds, dark 

 red-brown and cinereo-puberulous, 3'-5' long and about \ r wide; seeds in 1 series, obo- 

 void, compressed, dark red-brown, lustrous, about j' long, faintly marked by large oval 

 rings. 



A tree, occasionally 15-20 high, with a straight trunk 5 '-6' in diameter, stout wide- 

 spreading branches forming an open irregular head, and slender somewhat zigzag slightly 

 angled reddish brown branchlets roughened by numerous minute round lenticels, villose 

 with short pale hairs, and armed with thin terete puberulous spines occasionally f ' long; 

 in Texas usually shrubby, with numerous stems forming a symmetric round-topped bush 

 .only a few feet high. Bark dark brown or nearly black, and deeply furrowed. 



Fig. 543 



Distribution. Valley of the Rio Cibolo to Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande, Maverick 

 County, Texas; and in northern and southern Mexico, the West Indies, Venezuela, and on 

 the Galapagos Islands; in Texas probably arborescent only on the plains of the Rio Grande 

 near Spofford, Kinney County. 



3. Acacia Emoriana Benth. 



Leaves 3|'-4' long, with a slender petiole and rachis, villose-pubescent early in the 

 season, becoming nearly glabrous; and 4 or 5 pairs of pinnae; falling late in the autumn; 



