502 ' The Botanical Gazette. [December, 
Few trees are more handsome than the lofty Parkia Rox- 
burghit. Although we hardly expect such large plants in 
this suborder, some of these trees measure fully seventy feet 
in height, and with their large twice pinnate leaves and re- 
markable flowers, they present an appearance not soon for- 
gotten. The inflorescence consists of long pendulous racemes 
usually with three heads of flowers. These heads are as much 
as two and a half inches in diameter, and below this there is 
a neck of similar flowers one inch or more in diameter, and 
still below this is a fringe of flowers containing long stamin- 
odes, which in appearance remind one of the broad ruffs of 
Queen Elizabeth’s time. From these peculiar white heads, 
each of which contains a hundred or more separate flowers, 
as many asa dozen or fifteen pods, a foot or more long and 
one or two inches broad, are produced. 
Several Acacias are found, one of which,a prickly climber, 
often binds the tops of high trees together by means of its 
ramifications, although the stem at base may not be more 
than three or four inches in diameter. Mimosa pudica, with 
its pretty little pink flower heads and peculiar skeleton-like 
pods, is only too abundant, and must be classed with such 
pests as the thistle, nettle, and briar, with us. 
In continuance, I could mention the thick woody pods of 
Xylia, which, under the influence of the hot afternoon sun, 
burst with a loud report and scatter their seeds through the 
forest to quite a distance from the parent stem, as do the 
pods of one species of Mz//etia; or 1 might speak of the deli- 
cate clover-like Desmodium triflorum, ot the huge beans 0 
Canavalia ensiformis; but sufficient has been given, already. 
Hanover College, Hanover, Ind. 
