618 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



spicuously stipitate, villose. Fruit \'-3' long, indehiscent, black, more or less pubescent, 

 crowned with the thickened remnants of the style, 4-8-seeded, or rarely 1-seeded and then 

 subglobose, with thin fleshy rather sweet walls; persistent on the branches during the 

 winter; seeds oval, slightly compressed, with a thin crustaceous bright chestnut-brown 

 seed-coat; cotyledons surrounded by a thin layer of horny albumen, bright green; radicle 

 long and incurved. 



A tree, 18-20 high, with a trunk 8 '-10' in diameter, dividing into a number of stout 

 spreading branches forming a handsome round-topped head, and slender terete slightly zig- 

 zag branchlets, orange-brown or dark brown and slightly puberulous when they first ap- 

 pear, becoming bright green marked by narrow brown ridges, and in their second year 

 by the elevated tomentose leaf-scars. Winter-buds depressed, almost surrounded by 

 the base of the petiole, with broad scales coated on the outer surface with dark brown 

 Momentum and on the inner surface with thicker pale tomentum, and persistent on the 

 base of the growing shoot. Bark of the trunk about |' thick, dark reddish brown, and 

 broken into numerous oblong scales, the surface exfoliating in thin layers. Wood heavy, 

 very hard and strong, light red in color, with thick bright clear yellow sapwood of 10-12 

 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Usually on limestone hills, or on the borders of streams, ravines, or 

 depressions in the prairie, often forming small groves; valley of the Red River at Shreve- 

 port, Caddo Parish, Louisiana, to the valley of the Arkansas River, Arkansas, and to 

 southern Oklahoma (Choctaw and Love Counties), and southward in Texas to the valley 

 of the San Antonio and upper Guadalupe Rivers (Kerrville, Kerr County). 



1*. CLADRASTIS Raf . 



A tree, with copious watery juice, smooth gray bark, slender slightly zigzag terete 

 branchlets without a terminal bud, fibrous roots, and naked axillary buds 4 together, 

 superposed, flattened by mutual pressure into an acuminate cone, and inclosed collec- 

 tively in the hollow base of the petiole, the largest and upper one only developing, the 

 lowest minute and rudimentary. Leaves unequally pinnate, petiolate, with a stout ter- 

 ete petiole abruptly enlarged at base, 7-11-foliolate, deciduous; leaflets usually alternate, 

 broadly oval, the terminal one rhombic-ovate, contracted at apex into a short broad 

 point, cuneate at base, entire, petiolulate, without stipels, covered at first like the young 

 shoots w r ith fine silvery pubescence, and on the midrib with lustrous brown tomentum, 

 at maturity thin, glabrous, dark yellow-green on the upper surface, pale on the lower 

 surface, the midrib and numerous primary veins conspicuous, light yellow below; stipules 

 0. Flowers on slender puberulous pedicels, bibracteolate near the middle, with scarious 

 caducous bractlets, in long gracefully nodding stalked terminal panicles, the lower branches 

 racemose, and often springing from the axils of 1-flowered pedicels, the main axis slightly 

 zigzag, and, like the branches, covered at first with a glaucous bloom and slightly pilose; 

 bracts lanceolate, scarious, pale, caducous; calyx cylindric-campanulate, enlarged on 

 the upper side, and obliquely obconic at base, puberulous, 5-toothed, the teeth imbricated 

 in the bud, nearly equal, short and obtuse, the 2 upper slightly united; disk cupuliform, 

 adnate to the interior of the calyx-tube; corolla papilionaceous; petals white, unguiculate; 

 standard nearly orbicular, entire or slightly emarginate, reflexed above the middle, barely 

 longer than the straight oblong wing-petals, slightly biauriculate at the base of the blade, 

 marked on the inner surface with a pale yellow blotch; keel-petals free, oblong, nearly 

 straight, obtuse, slightly subcordate or biauriculate at base; stamens 10, free; filaments 

 filiform, slightly incurved near the apex, glabrous; anthers versatile; ovary linear, stipitate, 

 bright red, villose with long pale hairs, contracted into a long slender glabrous slightly 

 incurved subulate style; stigma terminal, minute; ovules numerous, suspended from the 

 inner angle of the ovary, superposed. Legume glabrous, short-stalked, linear-com- 

 pressed, the upper margin slightly thickened, tipped with the remnants of the persistent 

 style, 4-6-seeded, ultimately dehiscent, the valves thin and membranaceous . Seeds 



