536 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



irregularly obovate or sometimes nearly triangular, compressed or thickened, dark 

 chestnut-brown, lustrous, marked by faint oval rings, ^' long, surrounded at the base 

 by the enlarged bright red ariloid funicle; seed-coat thin, cartilaginous. 



A tree, sometimes 20-25 high, with a slender trunk 7'-8' in diameter, ascending 

 and spreading branches forming a low flat irregular head, and slender somewhat zig- 

 zag branchlets at first slightly striately angled, becoming terete, light gray-brown or 

 dark reddish brown, covered with minute pale lenticels, and armed with the straight 

 persistent rigid stipular spines broad at the base and ^' long, or rarelv minute; more 



often a shrub, with many vine-like almost prostrate stems. Bark of the trunk ' thick, 

 reddish brown and divided by shallow fissures into small square plates. Wood very 

 heavy, hard, close-grained, rich red varying to purple, with thin clear yellow sap- 

 wood. The bark is astringent and diuretic, and was once used in Jamaica as a cure 

 for many diseases. 



Distribution. Florida, shores of Caximbas Bay and on many of the southern 

 keys; most abundant in its arborescent form on the larger of the eastern keys, and 

 probably of its largest size in Florida on Elliott's Key; often forming shrubby 

 thickets; common and widely distributed through the Antilles to Venezuela and 

 New Granada. 



2. Zygia brevifolia, Sudw. Huajillo. 



Leaves 2'-3' long, 2' wide, long-petiolate, with 8-12 10-20-foliolate pinnae and 

 slender terete petioles 1' long and furnished near the middle with a dark oblong 

 gland, when they unfold coated with pale tomentum and at maturity glabrous with 

 the exception of the puberulous petioles and rachises, persistent or tardily deciduous; 

 leaflets oblong-linear, obtuse or acute at the apex, oblique at the base, very short- 

 petiolate, #-\' long, light green on the upper, paler on the lower surface. Flowers 

 white to violet-yellow, in globose or oblong heads ^' in diameter, on thin pubescent 

 peduncles bracteolate at the apex, coated at first, like the flower-buds, with thick 

 white tomentum, developed from the axils of lanceolate acute scarious deciduous 

 bracts, and arranged in short terminal racemes; calyx shortly 5-lobed, puberulous 

 on the outer surface, about -fa- long and one fourth the length of the puberulous 

 petals persistent with the stamens at the base of the mature fruit; stamens nearly 

 ' long. Fruit ripening at midsummer and often persistent on the branches after 



