CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT SPECIES.
Flowers violet blue, in terminal racemes; the upper calyx-lobes larger than the others and united; legume woody; seeds without albumen; leaves coriaceous, persistent.1. [S. secundiflora] (C, E, H). Flowers white, in axillary racemes; calyx-lobes equal; legume fleshy; seeds with albumen; leaves thin, deciduous.2. [S. affinis] (C).
1. [Sophora secundiflora] DC. Frijolito. Coral Bean.
Leaves persistent, covered when they unfold, especially on the lower surface of the leaflets, with silky white hairs, and at maturity 4′—6′ long, with a stout puberulous petiole slightly enlarged at base, and 7—9 oblong-elliptic leaflets rounded, emarginate or sometimes mucronate at apex, gradually contracted at base into a short thick petiolule, coriaceous, lustrous and dark yellow-green above, rather paler below, glabrous or sometimes slightly puberulous along the under side of the stout midrib, entire, with thickened margins, conspicuously reticulate-veined, 1′—2½′ long, ½′—1½′ wide, without stipels. Flowers with a powerful and delicious fragrance, appearing with the young leaves in very early spring, 1′ long, on stout pedicels sometimes 1′ in length, from the axils of subulate deciduous bracts ½′ or more long, and bibracteolate with 2 acute bractlets, in terminal 1-sided canescent racemes 2′—3′ in length; calyx campanulate, slightly enlarged on the upper side, the 3 lower teeth triangular and nearly equal, the 2 upper rather larger and united almost throughout; petals shortly unguiculate, violet blue or rarely white, the broad erect standard marked on the inner surface near the base with a few darker spots; ovary coated with long silky white hairs. Fruit terete, 1′—7′ long, ½′ thick, stalked, crowned with the thickened remnants of the style, covered with thick hoary tomentum, indehiscent, 1—8-seeded, with hard woody walls ¼′ thick; seeds short-oblong, rounded, ½′ long, bright scarlet, with a small pale hilum and a bony seed-coat; albumen 0; cotyledons thick, orange-colored, filling the cavity of the seed; radicle short and straight.
A tree, 25°—35° high, with a straight trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, separating several feet from the ground into a number of upright branches forming a narrow head, and branchlets coated when they first appear with fine hairy tomentum, becoming glabrous or nearly glabrous in their second year and pale orange-brown; more often a shrub, with low clustered stems. Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, orange-colored, streaked with red, with thick bright yellow sapwood of 10—12 layers of annual growth. The seeds contain a poisonous alkaloid, sophorin, with strong narcotic properties.
Distribution. Borders of streams, forming thickets or small groves, in low rather moist limestone soil; shores of Matagorda Bay, Texas, to the mountain cañons of New Mexico, and to those of Nuevo Leon and San Luis Potosí; of its largest size in the neighborhood of Matagorda Bay; south and west, especially west of the Pecos River, rarely more than a shrub.
Occasionally cultivated in the gardens of the southern states.
2. [Sophora affinis] T. & G.
