1. CONDALIA Cav.
Trees or shrubs, with rigid spinescent branches and minute scaly buds. Leaves alternate, subsessile, obovate or oblong, entire, feather-veined. Flowers axillary, solitary or fascicled, greenish white, on short pedicels; calyx with a short broad-obconic tube and a 5-lobed limb, the lobes ovate, acute, membranaceous, spreading and persistent; disk fleshy, flat, slightly 5-angled, surrounding the free base of the ovary; petals 0; stamens 5, inserted on the free margin of the disk between the lobes of the calyx; filaments incurved, shorter than the calyx-lobes; ovary 1-celled, conic, gradually narrowed into a short thick style; stigma 3-lobed; ovule ascending from the base of the cell. Fruit ovoid or subglobose; flesh thin; stone thick-walled, crustaceous. Seed compressed; seed-coat thin and smooth; cotyledons oval, flat.
Condalia with nine or ten species is confined to the New World and is distributed from western Texas and southern California to Brazil and Argentina. Of the six species found within the territory of the United States one is a small tree.
The generic name commemorates that of Antonio Condal, a Spanish physician of the eighteenth century sent to South America on a scientific mission in 1754.
1. [Condalia obovata] Hook. Purple Haw. Log Wood.
Leaves often fascicled on short spinescent lateral branchlets, spatulate to oblong-cuneate, mucronate, when they first appear pubescent, especially on the lower surface, at maturity glabrous, rather thin, pale yellow-green, 1′—1½′ long, and about ⅓′ wide, with a conspicuous midrib and usually 3 pairs of prominent primary veins; unfolding in May and June and falling irregularly during the winter. Flowers in 2—4-flowered short-stemmed fascicles, on branchlets of the year. Fruit ripening irregularly during the summer, ¼′ long, dark blue or black, with a sweet pleasant flavor.
A tree, sometimes 30° high, with a trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, erect rigid zigzag branchlets terminating in a stout spine and covered at first with soft velvety pubescence, becoming glabrous before the end of their first season, pale red-brown and often covered with thin scales; more often a shrub. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ thick, divided into flat shallow ridges, the dark brown surface tinged with red separating into thin scales. Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, light red, with light yellow sapwood of 7—8 layers of annual growth; burning with an intense heat and valued as fuel.
Distribution. Southwestern Texas from Jackson County (Vanderbilt) and Corpus Christi, Nueces County, to the Rio Grande and to Comal and Valverde Counties; in northeastern Mexico; of tree-like habit and of its largest size on the high sandy banks of the lower Rio Grande and its tributaries; often covering large areas with dense impenetrable chaparral.