ADDISONIA 51 
(Plate 26) 
PITHECOLOBIUM GUADALUPENSE 
Black-bead 
Native of southern Florida and the West Indies 
Family MIMosACEAE Mimosa Family 
Pithecolobium guadalupense Chapm. Fl. S. U.S. 116. 1860. 
An erect or irregularly spreading shrub, or a small tree with 
usually a crooked trunk and with the branches irregularly bent and 
spreading in all directions. The twigs are without hairs, but they 
are roughened with numerous unevenly elevated wart-like projec- 
tions on the bark. The bright-green leaves are evergreen and are 
twice pinnately compound, with usually four, or sometimes eight, 
leaflets which are borne in pairs. The leaflets are v variable, mostly 
an inch and a inte to two inches and three quarters in length, 
and with entire, leathery, sessile — ranging in shape from cune- 
ate or obovate to oblong, oval, or nearly circular. ‘Their surfaces 
i he 
numerous flowers are borne ioc in globose heads which are 
e hea 
stalks, singly, or usually few or very many in loose clusters, at the 
ends of the rigid branchlets. ‘The flower-heads are light pink or 
salmon-colored, but the very numerous stamens become more or 
less tawny before they fall away. The calyx is a short five-lobed 
cup. The corolla is much longer than the calyx and has a narrow 
tube which is closely invested by the calyx, and five lobes. The 
numerous stamens are exserted far from the corolla by their long 
and ee Lo teshe oo terminate in very small yellowish 
anthers. The filam united, near the pee. bas a tube. 
The ovary is evated fina the bottom of the calyx on a stalk and 
the body is closely invested by the Giiwient- tbe: x thread-like 
style, almost like one of the filaments, terminates the ovary. The 
the edges are often uneven. Theseedsare black, shining, and seated 
in a colored, often purplish, aril. 
The black-bead grows naturally in southern Florida, nearly 
throughout the Bahamas, and on the northern coast of Cuba. It 
was collected in the earlier half of the last century on Key West, 
and subsequently on many of the Florida Keys. Later it was 
discovered on the mainland of Florida in the vicinity of Miami. 
In the high pine woods, and in the hammocks where more or less 
crowded by other shrubs and trees, the plants of the black-bead 
are usually unsymmetric; but on the more open sand-dunes quite 
symmetric shrubs and trees are not uncommon. 
