FLORA OF ADEN. 
197 
Pod 4 — 6 inches long or more, straight or curved, at first fiat and 
constricted between the seeds, 3 — 6 lines broad, at length sweet and pulpy 
within, acuminate, longitudinally veined ; stipe 3—0 lines long. 
Distribution : - Tropical America. 
Note : — Prosopis juliflora DC. is the Algaroba of the Mexicans or 
Honey Mesquit, found as a small shrub in South-eastern California and 
eastward to Texas. It extends in various forms southward through 
Mexico, and along the Andes to Chili, and to Buenos Ayres. 
The abundant fruit is eaten by the Indians and often by whites, and 
is a valuable food for horses. The shrub also furnishes a valuable gum,, 
resembling Gum Arabic, which in Texas and Mexico is collected in 
considerable quantity for export. 
3. Calliandra Benth. 
Shrubs or trees. Leaves bipinnate, with small or large leaflets. 
Flowers in globose heads, polygamous, 5-merous. Calyx campanu- 
late, toothed. Corolla funnel-shaped, deeply 5-cleft. Stamens indefinite, 
monadelphous at the base ; filaments filiform, much exserted ; anthers 
minute, not gland-crested. Ovary stalked, many-ovuled ; style filiform ; 
stigma minute, capitate. 
Pod strap-shaped, slightly falcate, flat, rigidly coriaceous, the valves 
dehiscing with elasticity, bordered by much-thickened sutures, continuous 
within, narrowed gradually to a short stalk. 
Species about 80. 
Distribution : —Mostly tropical American. 
The following species is cultivated at Shaikh O’thman according to 
Defiers : — 
1. Calliandra umbrosa Benth. in Gen. PI. I, 597; Hook. FI. Brit. 
Ind. II, 302. 
Inga umbrosa Wall. PI. As. Rar. t. 124; Cat. 5273. 
Albizzia umbrosa Benth. in Hook. Lond. Journ. Ill, 86. 
Description — A tree 20 — 25 feet high with slender glabrous branches 
and sometimes with small suberect stipular spines Leaves 2-pinnate, 
petiole 1^ inches long, glabrous ; pinnae 2, terminal, each with rhachis 
1^ — 1J inches long, with a pair of large, sessile, oblique, oblong, rigidly 
subcoriaceous end-leaflets, acute at apex, cuneate at base, 6 inches long, 
2 inches wide and with an odd similar but much smaller leaflet — 2 
inches long, \ — f inch wide, on the outer side below ; leaflets all glabrous 
on both sides, rather distinctly nerved beneath and each with a gland on 
rhachis at base. 
