LEGUMINOS^E 567 



a thin crustaceous bright chestnut-brown seed-coat; cotyledons surrounded by a 

 thin layer of horny albumen, bright green; radicle long and incurved. 



A tree, 18-20 high, with a trunk 8'-10' in diameter, dividing, into a number of 

 stout spreading branches forming a handsome round-topped head, slender terete 

 slightly zigzag brauchlets at first orange-brown or dark brown and slightly puberu- 

 lous, bright green marked by narrow brown ridges, and in their second year by the 

 elevated tomentose leaf-scars. Winter-buds depressed, minute, almost surrounded 

 by the base of the petioles, with broad scales coated on the outer surface with dark 

 brown tomentum and on the inner surface with thicker pale tomentum, and per- 

 sistent on the base of the growing shoot. Bark of the trunk about -|' thick, dark 

 reddish brown, and broken into numerous oblong scales, the surface exfoliating 

 in thin layers. Wood heavy, very hard and strong, light red in color, with thick 

 bright clear yellow sapwood of 10-12 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Usually on limestone hills, or on the borders of streams, ravines, 

 or depressions in the prairie, often forming small groves; valley of the Arkansas 

 River, Arkansas, to that of the San Antonio, Texas, and westward in Texas to the 

 upper waters of the Colorado River. 



12. CLADRASTIS, Raf. 



A tree, with copious watery juice, smooth gray bark, slender slightly zigzag terete 

 branchlets without terminal buds, fibrous roots, and naked axillary buds, 4 together, 

 superposed, flattened by mutual pressure into an acuminate cone, and inclosed col- 

 lectively in the hollow base of the petiole, the largest and upper one only devel- 

 oping, the lowest minute and rudimentary. Leaves unequally pinnate, petiolate, 

 with stout terete petioles abruptly enlarged at the base, 7-11-foliolate, deciduous; 

 leaflets usually alternate, broadly oval, the terminal one rhombic-ovate, contracted 

 at the apex into short broad points, wedge-shaped at the base, entire, petiolulate, 

 without stipels, covered at first like the young shoots with fine silvery pubescence, 

 or on the midribs with lustrous brown tomentum, at maturity thin, glabrous, dark 

 yellow-green on the upper, pale on the lower surface, the midribs and numerous 

 primary veins conspicuous, light yellow below; stipules 0. Flowers on slender pu- 

 berulous pedicels, bibracteolate near the middle, with scarious caducous bractlets, in 

 long gracefully nodding stalked terminal panicles, the lower branches racemose, 

 and often springing from the axils of 1-flowered pedicels, the main axis slightly 

 zigzag, and, like the branches, covered at first with a glaucous bloom and slightly 

 pilose; bracts lanceolate, scarious, pale, caducous; calyx cylindrical-campanulate, 

 enlarged on the upper side, and obliquely obconic at the base, puberulous, 5-toothed, 

 the teeth imbricated in the bud, nearly equal, short and obtuse, the 2 upper slightly 

 united; disk cupuliform, adnate to the interior of the calyx-tube; corolla papiliona- 

 ceous; petals white, ungniculate; standard nearly orbicular, entire or slightly emar- 

 ginate, reflexed above the middle, barely longer than the straight oblong wings, 

 slightly biauriculate at the base of the blade, marked on the inner surface with a 

 pale yellow blotch; keel-petals free, oblong, nearly straight, obtuse, slightly sub- 

 cordate or biauriculate at the base; stamens 10, free; filaments filiform, slightly 

 incurved near the summit, glabrous; anthers versatile; ovary linear, stipitate, bright 

 red, villose, with long pale hairs, contracted into a long slender glabrous slightly 

 incurved subulate style; stigma terminal, minute; ovules numerous, suspended from 

 the inner angle of the ovary, superposed. Legume glabrous, short-stalked, linear- 



