Leaves appearing from March to April with or just after the flowers, 6′—12′ long, with a petiole 2′—6′ in length, rather coriaceous leaflets, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface and pale and rugose on the lower surface, 3′—5′ long and 1½′—2′ wide, the terminal leaflet on a petiolule ¼′—1′ in length. Flowers 1′ across when expanded, in crowded clusters 1½′—2′ long. Fruit 2′ broad, opening in October, the empty pods often remaining on the branches until the appearance of the flowers the following year; seeds ½′—⅝′ in diameter.
A tree, occasionally 25°—30° high, with a trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, dividing at some distance from the ground into a number of small upright branches, and branchlets light orange-brown and covered during their first season with short fine pubescence, and pale brown tinged with red, glabrous and marked by scattered lenticels in their second year; more often a shrub, with numerous stems. Winter-buds about ⅛′ in diameter. Bark of the trunk rarely more than ¼′ thick, light gray and broken by numerous shallow reticulated fissures. Wood heavy, close-grained, rather soft and brittle, red tinged with brown, with lighter colored sapwood. The sweet seeds possess powerful emetic properties and are reputed to be poisonous.
Distribution. Borders of streams, river-bottoms and limestone hills, and westward on the sides of mountain cañons; valley of the Trinity River, Dallas County and of the lower Brazos River, Texas, to the mountains of southeastern New Mexico, and southward into Mexico; most common and of its largest size forty to fifty miles from the Texas coast west of the Colorado River.
Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental plant in the southern United States.
XXXVIII. RHAMNACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with scaly or naked buds, watery bitter astringent juice, simple leaves, and minute deciduous stipules (persistent in Krugiodendron). Flowers small, mostly greenish, perfect (polygamo-diœcious in one species of Rhamnus); calyx 4—5-lobed, the lobes valvate in the bud; petals 4—5, inserted on the calyx near the margin of the conspicuous disk lining the short calyx-tube, and infolding the stamens, or 0; stamens as many as and alternate with the calyx-lobes, free, inserted at or below the margins of the disk; filaments slender, subulate; anthers introrse, versatile, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; pistils of 2—3 united carpels; ovary 2—3-, or rarely 1-celled by abortion, partly immersed in the disk; style terminal; stigma 2—4-lobed; ovules 1 in each cell, erect, anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle inferior. Fruit drupaceous, supported on the tube of the calyx and bearing the remnants of the style. Seed usually with scanty oily albumen; embryo with broad cotyledons; radicle inferior, next the hilum.
CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES.
Fruit more or less fleshy. Fruit with a single stone; petals 0. Sepals without crests. Leaves alternate; branches spinescent.1. [Condalia.] Leaves nearly opposite; branches not spinescent.2. [Reynosia.] Sepals crested; leaves mostly opposite.3. [Krugiodendron.] Fruit with 2 or 3 nutlets; petals 4 or 5, or 0; leaves alternate.4. [Rhamnus.] Fruit crustaceous, 3-lobed, separating into 3 longitudinally 2-valved nutlets. Sepals inflexed; petals narrowed into a long slender claw.5. [Ceanothus.] Sepals spreading; petals sessile.6. [Colubrina.]
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.