1. KŒBERLINIA Zucc.
Characters of the family.
Kœberlinia with one species is North American.
The generic name is in honor of L. Koeberlin, a German botanist.
1. Kœberlinia spinosa Zucc.
Leaves not more than ⅛′ long. Flowers appearing in May and June, about ¼′ in diameter. Fruit 3/16′—¼′ in diameter.
A bushy tree, rarely 20°—25° high, with a short stout trunk sometimes 6°—8° long and a foot in diameter; more often a low branching shrub forming impenetrable thickets often of considerable extent. Wood very hard, heavy, close-grained, dark brown somewhat streaked with orange, becoming almost black on exposure, with thin yellow or nearly white sapwood of 12—15 layers of annual growth.
Distribution. Dry gravelly mesas and foothills; valleys of the upper Colorado River (Big Springs, Howard County), and of the lower Rio Grande, Texas, westward through southern Texas and New Mexico to southern Arizona, and southward through northern Mexico, and in Lower California (San Jorge).