Question

Which plant is described by these clues? Theophrastus named the genus for a weaver's shuttle, after the shape of the flat dry case its seeds ripen in. That case is a thin flat {legume} 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 cm) long, drying reddish-brown and splitting to spill four to ten hard flattened seeds, and it often hangs on the bare tree well into winter. Inside each small two-sided bloom sit exactly ten free {stamens} around a single superior {ovary}. In bud its upper petal is the smallest of the five and lies innermost, wrapped over by the two side petals, the reverse of the way its relatives stack the same parts with the upper one outermost and largest. Its leaves are undivided heart-shaped blades with five to nine veins fanning from the notch, in a family where a leaf is nearly always cut into separate {leaflets}. In early spring the colour does not come from the shoot tips: clusters of magenta buds break straight out of the bark of old limbs and the trunk itself, weeks before a leaf appears. For all the company it keeps, it forms no root nodules and fixes no nitrogen at all, lacking the gene the job requires. It is an {understory} tree of moist rich woods, bluffs, wooded river valleys and limestone glades, and it is reliable enough on sweet ground to serve as an indicator of alkaline soil. Its epithet claims a northern country it barely reaches, a sliver of southernmost Ontario at the head of a range running south to central Mexico. The flowers are eaten raw or fried and taste faintly sour with vitamin C, the unopened buds are pickled as a caper substitute, and Alabama, Cherokee and Delaware peoples used bark infusions for fevers and coughs. It is the state tree of Oklahoma, and its purple-leaved selection Forest Pansy is among the most planted small flowering trees in temperate gardens.

Accepted Answer

Cercis canadensis

Name That Plant #044