BORRAGINACE.E 863 



roughened on the upper surface by the enlarged circular crowded pale tubercles, and more 

 or less covered with soft pale or rufous pubescence on the lower surface, especially on the 

 narrow midrib, and numerous primary veins arcuate near the margins; irregularly decidu- 

 ous during the winter; petioles stout, grooved, pubescent, f j' in length. Flowers opening 

 from autumn to early spring, in compact racemose scorpioid-branched panicles 2'-3' long and 



Fig. 763 



broad, on short leafy branches of the year, with linear acute deciduous bracts about ' long; 

 calyx open in the bud, divided to the base into 5 linear acute divisions and nearly as long as 

 the campanulate tube of the corolla, with ovate thin white lobes \' across when expanded. 

 Fruit ripening in autumn and spring, light yellow, f ' in diameter, with thin sweet rather 

 juicy edible flesh, and 2 2-seeded nutlets. 



A tree, sometimes 40-50 high, with a trunk occasionally 3 in diameter, stout spreading 

 branches forming a handsome compact round-topped head, and slender branchlets, without 

 a terminal bud, covered when they first appear, like the under surface of the leaves, the 

 branches of the inflorescence, and the outer surface of the calyx of the flower, with rigid 

 hirsute pale hairs, becoming in their first winter light brown tinged with red, sometimes 

 puberulous, often roughened by numerous pale lenticels, and by small depressed obcordate 

 leaf-scars displaying a short lunate row of fibro- vascular bundle-scars; usually much smaller 

 within the territory of the United States, and often a low shrub. Winter-buds: axillary, 

 minute, 1 or 2 together, superposed, buried in the bark, and covered by 2 pairs of dark 

 scales persistent on the base of the growing branchlet and at maturity acute, dark chest- 

 nut-brown, coated with pale flairs, and sometimes \' in length. Bark of young stems and 

 of the branches thin, light brown, and broken into thick appressed scales, becoming on old 

 trunks sometimes 1' thick, deeply furrowed and divided into long thick irregular plate-like 

 scales gray or reddish brown on the surface and separating into thin flakes. Wood heavy, 

 hard, not strong, close-grained, difficult to split, light brown, with thick slightly lighter 

 colored sap wood. 



Distribution. River valleys in fertile soil, or as a shrub on dry barren ridges; valleys of 

 the upper Marcos and of the Guadalupe Rivers, Texas, to the Rio Grande; often extremely 

 common on the bottom-lands, and probably of its largest size in the United States on the 

 Guadalupe and Nueces Rivers sixty or seventy miles from the coast; through Nuevo Leon 

 and Coahuila to the mountains of San Luis Potosi. 



Often planted as a shade-tree in the streets of the cities and towns of western Texas 

 and northeastern Mexico. 



