538 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



|' long; ovary glabrous, sessile. Fruit ripening in the autumn and remaining on 

 the branches until after the flowering season of the following year, sessile, tardily 

 dehiscent, flattened, turgid, straight or slightly falcate, oblique at the base, rounded 

 and contracted into a short broad point at the apex, 4'-6' long, I'-l^' broad, with 

 thick woody valves lined with a thick pithy substance inclosing and separating the 

 seeds; seeds suspended on very short straight funicles, bright red-brown, \' long, 

 ' wide, irregularly obovate, faintly marked by short oblong depressions; seed-coat 

 thick, crustaceous. 



A tree, 20-30 high, with a straight trunk 2-3 in diameter, separating 8-10 

 from the ground into short spreading branches forming a wide round head, and stout 

 zigzag branchlets, puberulous, light green or dark reddish brown when they first 

 appear, becoming in their second year glabrous or rarely puberulous, dark reddish 

 brown or light gray, and armed with the persistent stipular pale chestnut-brown 



spines \'-\' long. Wood exceedingly heavy, hard, compact, close-grained, dark rich 

 red-brown slightly tinged with purple, with thin clear bright yellow sap wood; almost 

 indestructible in contact with the ground and largely used for fence-posts; valued 

 by cabinet-makers and for fuel, and considered more valuable than that of any other 

 tree of the Rio Grande valley. The seeds are palatable and nutritious, and are boiled 

 when green or roasted when ripe by the Mexicans, who use their thick shells as a 

 substitute for coffee. 



Distribution. Shores of Matagorda Bay, Texas, to the Sierra Nevada of Nuevo 

 Leon, and in Lower California; common on the bluffs of the Gulf coast and on both 

 banks of the lower Rio Grande; south of the Rio Grande one of the commonest and 

 most beautiful trees of the region. 



2. LYSILOMA, Benth. 



Trees or shrubs, with slender unarmed branches, abruptly bipinnate long-peti- 

 olate persistent leaves, their petioles marked by large conspicuous glands, and small 

 leaflets in many pairs; stipules large, membranaceous, persistent or deciduous. 

 Flowers perfect or rarely polygamous, minute, usually white or greenish white, 

 from the axils of minute bractlets more or less dilated at the apex, in globose 



