BIGNONIACE^ 791 



LIX. BIGNONIACE^E. 



Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and opposite or rarely alternate simple 

 (in the arborescent genera of the United States) leaves without stipules. Flow- 

 ers perfect, large and showy ; calyx closed in the bud, bilabiately splitting 

 in anthesis ; corolla hypogynous, bilabiate, 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the 

 bud ; stanfens 2 or 4, inserted on the corolla, introrse ; anthers 2-celled, the 

 cells opening longitudinally ; staminodia 1 or 3 ; ovary sessile, 1 or 2-celled, 

 gradually narrowed into a slender simple style 2-lobed and stigmatic at the 

 apex ; ovules numerous, horizontal, anatropous ; raphe ventral ; micropyle 

 superior. Fruit a linear woody loculicidally 2-valved capsule, or a berry. Seeds 

 without albumen ; embryo filling the cavity of the seed. 



The Bignooia family with about one hundred genera, many of them of 

 scandent plants, is widely distributed in the tropics and most abundant in the 

 New World, with a few genera extending into temperate regions. Of the five 

 genera of the United States three are arborescent. Many of the species are 

 important timber-trees. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Fruit a linear woody capsule ; ovary 2-celled ; leaves membranaceous, deciduous. 



Stamens 4 ; staminodium 1 ; leaves linear, often alternate or scattered. 1. Chilopsis. 



Stamens 2 ; staminodia 3 ; leaves oblong-ovate, mostly opposite. 2. Catalpa. 



Fruit a berry; stamens 4 ; staminodium 1 ; ovary 1 -celled; leaves coriaceous, persistent. 



3. Crescentia. 



1. CHILOPSIS, D. Don. 



A tree, with slender terete branches without terminal buds, minute compressed 

 rusty-pubescent axillary buds covered by several imbricated scales, those of the 

 inner rows accrescent, deeply furrowed bark, soft coarse-grained dark-colored wood, 

 and fibrous roots. Leaves opposite, alternate or scattered, involute in the bud, linear 

 or linear-lanceolate, long-pointed, entire, 3-nerved, the lateral nerves obscure, reticu- 

 late-venulose, inembranaceous, light green, smooth or glutinous, short-petiolate or 

 sessile from an enlarged base, deciduous, in falling leaving small elevated suborbicular 

 scars. Flowers on slender pedicels from the axils of ovate acute scarious tomentose 

 deciduous bracts and bibracteolate near the middle, in short puberulous crowded 

 racemes terminal on leafy branches of the year; calyx coated with pale toraentum, 

 closed before anthesis into an ovoid rounded apiculate bud splitting to the base into 2 

 ovate divisions, minutely toothed at the apex, the upper with 3, the lower with 2 rigid 

 teeth, membranaceous, dark green; corolla white shaded into pale purple, slightly 

 oblique, enlarged and blotched with yellow in the throat, the limb undulate-margined, 

 the upper lip 2-lobed, the lower unequally 3-lobed, the central lobe much longer than 

 the others; stamens 4, inserted in 1 row near the base of the corolla, in pairs, introrse; 

 filaments filiform, glabrous, the anterior nearly twice as long as the posterior; an- 

 ther oblong, the cells divergent in anthesis; staminodium 1, posterior, linear, acute; 

 ovary 2-celled, sessile on the thin nearly obsolete annular disk, conical, glabrous, 

 gradually narrowed into a slender style divided at the apex into 2 ovate flat rounded 

 lobes; ovules inserted in many series on a central placenta. Fruit a slender elon- 

 gated thin-walled capsule gradually narrowed from the middle to Hie ends, splitting 

 loculicidally into 2 concave valves. Seeds numerous, inserted in 2 ranks near the 

 margin of the thin flat woody septum free from the walls of the capsule, compressed, 



