IMPORTANT WESTERN BROWSE PLANTS 85 
Silver peabush (P. argyraea) is supposed by stockmen on the 
Alamo division of the Lincoln National Forest, southern New Mexico, 
to be poisonous. The species is a low shrub, ranging from western 
Texas to New Mexico and south into Mexico. 
Feather peabush (P. formosa), known by a variety of local names, 
including bastard mesquite, little featherbush, and shrubby pea, 
grows commonly but usually scatteringly on dry plains and hills 
of the mesquite-covillea and woodland types, between about 3,500 
and 7,000 feet, from western Texas to southern Utah, Sonora, and 
Chihuahua, and is never over about 2 or 38 feet high. It often has 
two flowering periods, in spring and late summer. It is sometimes 
grazed by goats and sheep but perhaps is never important; it has 
been considered good cattle feed in the Santa Rita region of south- 
eastern Arizona. In full bloom it is a remarkably handsome bush, 
as its specific name indicates. 
Black peabush (P. frutescens) is a somewhat smaller species, 
found in western Texas and New Mexico thence south into northern 
Mexico, and often common in open rocky slopes of the yellow pine 
and upper woodland belts, largely between 6,000 and 7,000 feet. 
Local stockmen hold it to be good goat feed and it is occasionally 
nibbled by cattle and horses. It occurs on an area of the Lincoln 
National Forest, N. Mex., where cattle losses have taken place, but 
a poisonous-plant expert of the United States Department of Agri- 
culture who visited the place deemed that the losses were due to 
another species. 
James peabush (P. jamesiz), of western Texas, southern Colorado, 
and New Mexico, with cloverlike leaves, has been noted to be grazed 
slightly by cattle; it is, however, hardly shrubby. 
Bearded peabusn (P. pogonanthera), another semiherbaceous spe- 
cies of the Southwest, has been reported as consumed with apparent 
readiness by cattle in the Santa Rita region of southern Arizona. 
Desertbeauty (P. johnsoni and P. amoena, perhaps only a variety 
or form of P. johnson?) is the common name of two very handsome, 
closely related bushes of the southern Great Basin region and South- 
west. They are sometimes locally cultivated or encouraged as orna- 
mentals. ‘There is no direct evidence as yet that these two species 
have forage significance, although P. amoeena is thought to furnish 
some spring browse in the Dixie region of southwestern Utah. 
Parry peabush (P. parryi), a hairy-leaved undershrub of southern 
and Lower California, southern Arizona, and Sonora, is cropped 
more or less by cattle in Arizona after the leaves first appear and 
while they are fresh and tender. 
Tree-pea (P. spinosa), the familiar, spiny-twigged plant of the 
Colorado Desert region and Sonora, frequently becomes a small tree 
and is very attractive when (usually in June) the profuse, highly 
fragrant, violet-blue flowers appear. The herbage is not known 
to be eaten by livestock but it furnishes scanty but welcome shade 
to domestic animals in the desert regions and fuel of fair quality 
for the traveler. Other names for this species include indigobush, 
mangle, smoke-tree, spiny parosela, and tree parosela. 
OTHER IMPORTANT GENERA 
Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius), known also as green (or Irish) 
broom, bannal, besom, and hagweed, is a shrub, about 3 to 5 feet 
