2012年1月31日星期二

Help me identify this texas tree please?

I've been trying to figure out what kind of tree this is. http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z315/... (the two that are closer to the camera) Their location is north central san antonio. It's got a lot of these hanging things, along with the seed pods. http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z315/...

I guess what got my attention was those brown hanging things. they have little spikes that are like little seeds, but they can't be seeds because the pods are the seeds?

Someone told me if it had purple flowers then maybe it was a texas morning glory aka mescalbean. But i've never seen it flower all year at all. (you can see some pink flowers in the first pic but that is from the tree behind it) It just has a ton of those hanging things, and then it grew the pods.

Help me identify this texas tree please?
From the second photo of the pods it appears to be Mescalbean of family Fabaceae ( It is a sub family of Leguminosae and earlier known as Papilionaceae family . It is a Bean or Pulses Family as all beans , legumes and pulses come from this family ) . Details with photos are given below . Please confirm or reject.



Texas Mescalbean (Calia secundiflora, formerly Sophora secundiflora), also known as the Frijolito or, confusingly, as Texas Mountain Laurel, is a slow-growing, common shrub or small tree native to the southwestern United States (Texas, New Mexico) and Mexico (Chihuahua and Coahuila south to Hidalgo, Puebla and Queretaro), well-adapted to its arid to semiarid environment.



An evergreen, its leaves are pinnately-compound, with small, roughly spatulate leaflets; the leaflets are rather thick, and waxy to the touch.

Never tall, and rarely having a straight trunk, its bark is smooth in all but the oldest specimens.



Uses---

A popular ornamental plant, it is well known for its highly fragrant, purple flowers (the smell is sometimes compared to Kool-Aid) and very hard, bright red seeds. The reddish wood it produces is potentially useful, but as yet has little commercial value.

http://www.aridzonetrees.com/AZT%20Inter...





This is an often-misunderstood plant, frequently confused with the mezcal plant used in tequila manufacture, as well as with mescaline, due to its name of "mescalbean".



Further adding to this is the fact that the beans were in fact once used by some native American tribes as a hallucinogen, before being supplanted by peyote.



This plant does not contain any mescaline, however; all parts of it are highly poisonous, due to the principle alkaloid cytisine, which is chemically related to nicotine.



http://images.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl...

http://biology.missouristate.edu/Herbari...

http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/taes/trac...

http://uvalde.tamu.edu/herbarium/final/s...

http://www.swsbm.com/Images/New11-2000/S...



All the images above are those are of Sophora secundiflora or Calia secundiflora . ( This is the plant in your images.)



The photo below is another species -



1 ) Sophora microphylla -http://www.nccpg.com/gloucestershire/Sop...



2 )Sophora japonica--http://biology.missouristate.edu/Herbari...



There are many more !!
Reply:mescal bean @ .davesgarden.com

Brushing Teeth

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