552 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



Cercis is confined to eastern and western North America, southern Europe, and to 

 southwestern, central, and eastern Asia. Of the seven species now distinguished, 

 three occur in North America. Two of these are arborescent. 



The generic name is from Kepitis, the Greek name of the European species, from a 

 fancied resemblance of the fruit to the weaver's implement of that name. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT SPECIES. 



Flowers in sessile clusters; leaves ovate, acute, cordate or truncate at the base. 



1. C. Canadensis (A, C). 

 Flowers fascicled or slightly racemose ; leaves reniform. 2. C. Texensis (C). 



1. Cercis Canadensis, L. Redbud. Judas-tree. 



Leaves broadly ovate, acute or acuminate and often abruptly contracted at the 

 apex into short broad points, truncate or more or less cordate at the base, entire, 

 glabrous with the exception of axillary tufts of white hairs, or sometimes more or 

 less pubescent below, 3'-5' long and broad, turning in the autumn before falling 

 bright clear yellow; their petioles 2'-5' long. Flowers ' long, on pedicels ' \' in 

 length and fascicled 4-8 together. Fruit fully grown in the south by the end of 

 May and at the north at midsummer, and then pink or rose color, 2|'-3^' long, fall- 

 ing late in the autumn or in early winter; seeds about \' long. 



A tree, sometimes 40-50 high, with a straight trunk usually separating 10-12 

 from the ground into stout branches covered with smooth light brown or gray bark, 

 and forming an upright or often a wide flat head, and slender glabrous somewhat 

 angled branchlets, brown and lustrous at first, becoming dull and darker the follow- 

 ing year and ultimately dark or grayish brown. Bark of the trunk about \' thick 



and divided by deep longitudinal fissures into long narrow plates, the bright red- 

 brown surface separating into thin scales. Wood heavy, hard, not strong, close- 

 grained, rich dark brown tinged with red, with thin lighter colored sapwood of 8-10 

 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Borders of streams and rich bottom-lands, forming, especially west 

 of the Alleghany Mountains, an abundant undergrowth to the forest; valley of the 

 Delaware River, New Jersey, southward to the shores of Tampa Bay and to northern 

 Alabama and Mississippi, and westward to southern Ontario, eastern Nebraska, the 



