814 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



branches forming a narrow-oblong round-topped head, unarmed, or armed with stout rigid 

 straight or slightly curved spines frequently developing into spinescent leafy lateral 

 branchlets, and slender often somewhat zigzag branchlets coated with thick rufous or pale 

 tomentum when they first appear, becoming in their first winter red-brow r n to ashy gray 

 and glabrous or nearly so, and marked by occasional minute lenticels and by small semi- 

 orbicular leaf-scars displaying 2 clusters of fibro- vascular bundle-scars; of its largest size in 

 the Texas coast region; much smaller east of the Mississippi River, and there rarely more 

 than 20 tall. Winter-buds obtuse, |' long, covered with broad-obovate rusty-tomentose 

 scales. Bark of the trunk \' thick, dark gray-brown and usually divided into narrow ridges 



Fig. 724 



broken into thick appressed scales. Wood heavy, rather soft, not strong, close-grained, 

 light brown or yellow, with thick lighter colored sapwood; producing in Texas considerable 

 quantities of clear viscid gum from the freshly cut wood. 



Distribution. Southern and southeastern Georgia, western Florida southward to thj 

 neighborhood of Lake City, Columbia County and to Cedar Key, coast of Alabama and 

 inland to Dallas County, southern Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas to the valley of the 

 San Antonio River and over the Edwards Plateau (Kendall, Kerr and Brown Counties) to 

 the valley of the upper Brazos River (Palo Pinto County), and northward through western 

 Louisiana and western Arkansas to western Oklahoma (Seiling, Dewey County), and to 

 southeastern Kansas (Cherokee County) and southern Missouri as far north as the valley 

 of the Meramec River (near Allenton, St. Louis County), and southern Illinois (near 

 Mound City, Pulaski County) ; at Calcasieu Pass, on the sandy beaches of the Louisiana 

 coast forming thickets of plants 6-8 high, and uninjured by salt spray; the var. albicans 

 in eastern Texas from the valley of the lower Brazos to that of the San Antonio River and 

 in the neighborhood of Monterey, Nuevo Leon; most distinct and of its largest size on the 

 bottoms of the Guadalupe River, near Victoria, Victoria County, and here occasionally 

 70-80 high, with a trunk 3 in diameter. 



Passing into the var. rigida A. Gray, with smaller rather narrower leaves and often 

 more spinescent branches. Brown and Uvalde Counties, Texas; in Coahua and Nuevo 

 Leon, and in the canons of the mountains of southern Arizona up to altitudes of at least 

 4000-5000; in Texas shrubby in habit; in Arizona forming dense thickets of slender 

 stems often 20-25 tall and only 2'-3' in diameter. 



3. Bumelia monticola Buckl. 



Leaves oblong-obovate, narrowed and acute or rounded and rarely slightly emarginate 

 at apex, cuneate at base, entire, covered above with matted pale hairs and densely below 



