LEGUMINOS^E 



617 



throughout; petals shortly unguiculate. violet blue or rarely white, the broad erect stand- 

 ard marked on the inner surface near the base with a few darker spots; ovary coated with 

 long silky white hairs. Fruit terete, l'-7' long, \' thick, stalked, crowned with the thick- 

 ened remnants of the style, covered with thick hoary tomentum, indehiscent, 1-8-seeded, 

 with hard woody walls \' thick; seeds short-oblong, rounded, \' long, bright scarlet, with 

 a small pale hilum and a bony seed-coat; albumen 0; cotyledons thick, orange-colored, 

 filling the cavity of the seed; radicle short and straight. 



A tree, 25-35 high, with a straight trunk 6'-8' in diameter, separating several feet 

 from the ground into a number of upright branches forming a narrow head, and branchlets 

 coated when they first appear with fine hairy tomentum, becoming glabrous or nearly 

 glabrous in their second year and pale orange-brown; more often a shrub, wdth low clustered 

 stems. Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, orange-colored, streaked w r ith red, with 

 thick bright yellow sap wood of 10-12 layers of annual growth. The seeds contain a 

 poisonous alkaloid, sophorin, with strong narcotic properties. 



Distribution. Borders of streams, forming thickets or small groves, in low rather moist 

 limestone soil; shores of Matagorda Bay, Texas, to the mountain canons of New Mexico, 

 and to those of Nuevo Leon and San Luis Potosi; of its largest size in the neighborhood 

 of Matagorda Bay; south and west, especially west of the Pecos River, rarely more than 

 a shrub. 



Occasionally cultivated in the gardens of the southern states. 



2. Sophora affinis T. & G. 



Leaves deciduous, coated when they unfold with hoary pubescence, 6'-9' long, with 

 a slender puberulous petiole, and 13-19 elliptic, acute or obtuse slightly mucronate leaflets 

 contracted into short stout pubescent petiolules, entire or with slightly wavy thickened 



Fig. 565 



margins, thin, pale yellow-green and glabrous above, paler and covered with scattered 

 hairs or nearly glabrous below, \'-\\' long and |' wide, with a prominent orange-colored 

 midrib, slender primary veins, and conspicuous reticulate veinlets. Flowers \' long, ap- 

 pearing in early spring with the young leaves, on slender canescent pedicels nearly ^' long, 

 from the axils of minute deciduous bracts, in slender pubescent semipendent racemes, 3'-5' 

 long, from the axils of the leaves at the end of the branches; calyx short-campanulate, 

 abruptly narrowed at base, somewhat enlarged on the upper side, slightly pubescent, 

 especially on the margins of the short nearly triangular teeth; petals short-unguiculate, 

 white tinged with rose color; standard nearly orbicular, slightly emarginate, reflexed, as 

 long and twice as broad as the ovate auriculate wing-petals and the keel-petals; ovary con- 



