718 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



face and pale and rugose on the lower surface, 3'-5' long and l|'-2' wide, the terminal leaf- 

 let on a petiolule j'-l' in length. Flowers 1' across when expanded, in crowded clusters 

 l|'-2' long. Fruit 2' broad, opening in October, the empty pods often remaining on the 

 branches until the appearance of the flowers the following year; seeds |'-f in diameter. 

 A tree, occasionally 25-30 high, with a trunk 6'-8' in diameter, dividing at some dis- 

 tance from the ground into a number of small upright branches, and branchlets light 

 orange-brown and covered during their first season with short fine pubescence, and pale 

 brown tinged with red, glabrous and marked by scattered lenticels in their second year; 

 more often a shrub, with numerous stems. Winter-buds about ' in diameter. Bark of 



Fig. 645 



the trunk rarely more than j' thick, light gray and broken by numerous shallow reticulated 

 fissures. Wood heavy, close-grained, rather soft and brittle, red tinged with brown, with 

 lighter colored sap wood. The sweet seeds possess powerful emetic properties and are 

 reputed to be poisonous. 



Distribution. Borders of streams, river-bottoms and limestone hills, and westward on 

 the sides of mountain canons; valley of the Trinity River, Dallas County and of the lower 

 Brazos River, Texas, to the mountains of southeastern New Mexico, and southward into 

 Mexico; most common and of its largest size forty to fifty miles from the Texas coast west 

 of the Colorado River. 



Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental plant in the southern United States. 



XXXVHI. RHAMNACEJE. 



Trees or shrubs, with scaly or naked buds, watery bitter astringent juice, simple leaves, 

 and minute deciduous stipules (persistent in Krugiodendrori) . Flowers small, mostly green- 

 ish, perfect (polygamo-dicecious in one species of Rhamnus) ; calyx 4-5-lobed, the lobes val- 

 vate in the bud; petals 4-5, inserted on the calyx near the margin of the conspicuous disk 

 lining the short calyx-tube, and infolding the stamens, or 0; stamens as many as and alter- 

 nate with the calyx-lobes, free, inserted at or below the margins of the disk; filaments 

 slender, subulate; anthers introrse, versatile, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; 

 pistils of 2-3 united carpels; ovary 2-3-, or rarely 1 -celled by abortion, partly immersed in 

 the disk; style terminal; stigma 2-4-lobed; ovules 1 in each cell, erect, anatropous; raphe 

 ventral ; micropyle inferior. Fruit drupaceous, supported on the tube of the calyx and bear- 

 ing the remnants of the style. Seed usually with scanty oily albumen: embryo with broad 

 cotvledons; radicle inferior, next the hilum. 



