LEGUMINOS^E 



561 



near the base on the inner surface with conspicuous red spots; stamens shorter than 

 the petals. Fruit hanging in graceful racemes, 2'-4' long, long-pointed, dark 

 orange-brown, slightly pilose, compressed between the remote seeds; seeds ^' 

 long, nearly terete, with thick albumen and bright yellow embryos. 



A tree, 18-30 high, with a trunk sometimes a foot in diameter, usually separating 

 6-8 from the ground into slender spreading somewhat pendulous branches forming 

 a wide graceful head, and slightly zigzag branchlets puberulous and yellow-green 

 during their first season, becoming glabrous, gray or light orange color and rough- 

 ened by lenticels in their second and third years. Bark of the trunk about \' thick, 

 brown tinged with red, the generally smooth surface broken into small persistent 

 plate-like scales. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, with very thick lighter colored 

 sapwood tinged with yellow. 



Distribution. Low moist soil, valley of the lower Rio Grande, Texas; common 

 in northern Mexico and in the valley of the Colorado River, Arizona, and in Lower 

 California; naturalized on Key West, the Bahamas, the West Indian islands, and 

 in many other tropical countries. 



Cultivated in most warm countries as an ornament of gardens, and to form 

 hedges. 



2. Parkinsonia microphylla, Torr. 



Leaves 1' long, pale, densely tomentose when they unfold, pubescent at maturity, 

 deciduous at the end of a few weeks; rachises short, rarely spinescent, or more com- 

 monly 0; leaflets in 4-6 pairs, distant, entire, sessile, broadly oblong or nearly orbic- 

 ular, obtuse or somewhat acute at the apex, oblique at the base, \' long; stipules 



caducous. Flowers opening in May or early June before the leaves, on slender 

 pedicels, in racemes 1' or less long in the axils of leaves of the previous year, pale 

 yellow; stamens longer than the petioles. Fruit persistent on the branches for at 

 least a year, frequently 1 or 2, rarely 3-seeded, 2'-3' long, slightly puberulous, espe- 

 cially toward the base, with a long acuminate often falcate apex; seeds compressed, 

 ^' long, with bright green embryos. 



An intricately branched tree, occasionally 20 -25 high, with a trunk a foot in 

 diameter, and stout pale yellow-green rigid branchlets terminating in stout spines, 

 covered at first with deciduous tomentum, slightly puberulous during their first 

 and second seasons, and often marked by the persistent scales of undeveloped 



