Some Little-Known Pod-Bearers
The Sophora, or Pink Locust (Sophora affinis, T. & G.), local in Arkansas and Texas, is a small round-headed tree, with deciduous leaves, pink flowers and small black pods, tightly constricted between the globular seeds.
The Leucmna (Leucerna Greggii, Wats.) is a spineless little tree, with fine, twice-compound foliage like the acacias, and white flowers, whose structure ranks it with the mimosas. Its shoots and petioles are powdered white. The tree is cultivated from the West Indies to southern California. It is found wild near Key West, Florida, and in western Texas.
The Chalky Leucaena, or Mimosa (Leucana pulverulenta, Benth.) grows as a handsome, round-headed tree near the mouth of the Rio Grande River in Texas. Its leaves and young shoots are thickly covered with white down when young. The feathery foliage and white flowers and fruit commend it to cultivators.
The Acacia (Cercidium floridum, Benth.) is a little, gnarled tree, rare in western Texas, whose leaves are locust-like, but reduced to very tiny size in the dry air. The whole tree is invested with smooth, green bark which serves the office of foliage. The spiny twigs are sparsely set with regular yellow flowers throughout the summer, with pointed, few-seeded pods, yellow and papery, coming on after them. It is, on the whole, a striking looking tree, and good to see in the desert.
The Sonora Ironwood (Olneya Tesota, Gray) is a small tree, with hoary, spine-beset twigs and locust-like flowers, leaves and seed pods. It has very hard wood. In the deserts between Arizona and Lower California it is a most beautiful object when in bloom. It sheds its red bark in flakes after the manner of the buttonwood.
The Jamaica Dogwood (Ichthyontethia Piscipula, A. S. Hitch.) grows in southern Florida, a conspicuous and beautiful tree when the great clusters of pink pea-like blossoms hang on the bare branches. The slender brown pods have four wide, papery, longitudinal frills. The hard wood is used in boatbuilding, and
the bark of the roots contains a drug like opium. The natives of the West Indies have from ancient times used this bark to stupefy fish they were trying to capture.
The Mesquite, or Honey Pod (Prosopis juli/lora, DC.) is one of the wonderful plants of the arid and semi-arid regions. It is found as a tree 6o feet high along the rivers of southern Arizona. It ranges from Texas to southern California, and north to Colo rado and Utah. In arid situations it becomes a low shrub, often with little to show above ground. But the roots develop to amazing size. There is a central tap root that goes in search of water, sometimes 6o feet below the surface. Secondary roots go out in all directions, and form a labyrinth of woody substance, which in quantity furnishes the treeless region with building and fencing material and good fuel. Oxen drag the mesquite out by the roots, and it is cut into posts, railroad ties and frames for the adobe houses.
The leaves are like those of our honey locust, but much reduced in size. The tree furnishes little shade. But young shoots, leaves and the greenish, fragrant flowers which come in successive crops from May to July, are all cropped eagerly by cattle. So are the long, slim, sweet pods which are also used as food by Indians and Mexicans. The sharp, spiny branches of this shrub make it a good hedge plant, and the complex root system makes it invaluable for the holding of sand dunes. Alto gether the mesquite is one of the most useful trees in the silva of this country. Aborigines in the American desert might well worship it as the Hindoos do a related species.
The Screw Bean, or Mesquite (Prosopis pubescens, Benth.), with hoary foliage, grows in the same region, and differs from the true mesquite chiefly in having its pods spirally twisted.