LEGUMINOS.E 603 



A tree. 25-30 high, with a slender trunk sometimes a foot in diameter, and terete 

 branches canescently pubescent or glabrate when they first appear, becoming glabrous 

 and light red-brown in their third year, and armed with stout spines |'-f ' long. Bark 

 of the trunk thick, light brown tinged with red, separating in long thin persistent ribbon- 

 like scales. Wood heavy, exceedingly hard, close-grained, not strong, light brown, with 

 thin lighter colored sapwood of 6 or 7 layers of annual growth; used as fuel and occasion- 

 ally for fencing. The sweet, nutritious legumes are valued as fodder. 



Distribution. Sandy or gravelly bottom-lands; valley of the Rio Grande in western 

 Texas, and through New Mexico and Arizona to southern Utah and Nevada, and to San 

 Diego County, California, and northern Mexico; attaining its largest size in the United 

 States in the valleys of the lower Colorado and Gila Rivers, Arizona. 



G. CERCIS L. 



Trees or shrubs, with scaly bark, slender unarmed branchlets prolonged by an upper 

 axillary bud, marked by numerous minute pale lenticels, and in their first winter by small 

 elevated horizontal leaf-scars showing the ends of two large fibro-vascular bundles, and 

 small scaly obtuse axillary buds covered by imbricated ovate chestnut-brown scales. 

 Leaves simple, entire, 5-7-nerved with prominent nerves, long-petiolate, deciduous; 

 petioles slender, terete, abruptly enlarged at apex; stipules ovate, acute, small, membrana- 

 ceous, caducous. Flowers appearing in early spring before or with the leaves on thin 

 jointed pedicels, in simple fascicles or racemose clusters produced on branches of the previ- 

 ous or earlier years, or on the trunk, with small scale-like bracts often imbricated at the 

 base of the inflorescence, and minute bractlets; calyx disciferous, short-turbinate, purplish, 

 persistent, the tube oblique at base, campanulate, enlarged on the lower side, 5-toothed, 

 the short broad teeth imbricated in the bud; corolla subpapilionaceous; petals nearly 

 equal, rose color, oblong-ovate, rounded at apex, unguiculate, slightly auricled on one 

 side of the base of the blade, the upper petal slightly smaller and inclosed in the bud by the 

 wing-petals encircled by the broader slightly imbricated keel-petals; stamens 10, inserted 

 in 2 rows on the margin of the thin disk, free, declinate, those of the inner row opposite 

 the petals and rather shorter than the others; filaments enlarged and pilose below the 

 middle, persistent until the fruit is grown; anthers uniform, oblong, attached on the back 

 near the base; ovary short-stalked, inserted obliquely in the bottom of the calyx-tube; 

 style filiform, fleshy, incurved, with a stout obtuse terminal stigma; ovules 2-ranked, at- 

 tached to the inner angle of the ovary. Legume stalked, oblong or broad-linear, straight 

 on the upper edge, curved on the lower edge, acute at the ends, compressed, tipped with 

 the thickened remnants of the style, many-seeded, 2-valved, the valves coriaceo-mem- 

 branaceous, many-veined, tardily dehiscent by the dorsal and often by the wing-margined 

 ventral suture, dark red-purple and lustrous at maturity. Seeds suspended transversely 

 on a slender funicle, ovoid or oblong, compressed, the small depressed hilum near the 

 apex; seed-coat crustaceous, bright reddish brown; embryo surrounded by a thin layer of 

 horny albumen, compressed; cotyledons oval, flat, the radicle short, straight or obliquely 

 incurved, slightly exserted. 



Cercis is confined to eastern and western North America, southern Europe, and to 

 southwestern, central and eastern Asia. Of the eight species now distinguished, three 

 occur in North America. Two of these are arborescent. 



The generic name is from /cepxi's, the Greek name of the European species, from a fan- 

 cied resemblance of the fruit to the weaver's implement of that name. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT SPECIES. 



Flowers in sessile clusters; leaves ovate, acute, cordate or truncate at base. 



1. C. canadensis (A, C). 

 Flowers fascicled or slightly racemose: leaves reniform. 2. C. reniformis (C). 



