Texas ebony facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Texas ebony |
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Ebenopsis
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E. ebano
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| Ebenopsis ebano (Berland.) Barneby & J.W.Grimes
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Acacia flexicaulis Benth. |
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Ebenopsis ebano is a special kind of flowering plant. It belongs to the pea family, called Fabaceae. You can find this tree growing naturally in southern Texas in the United States and in eastern Mexico. People often call it Texas ebony or ebano in Spanish.
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About the Texas Ebony Tree
The Texas ebony is a small evergreen tree. This means it keeps its leaves all year long. It can grow to be about 7.6 to 9.1 meters (25 to 30 feet) tall. Its branches spread out, making a crown about 1.8 to 4.6 meters (6 to 15 feet) wide.
Where Texas Ebony Grows
The Texas ebony tree grows from Laredo and Corpus Christi, Texas in the United States. Its range goes south through several states in Mexico. These states include Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, San Luis Potosí, Veracruz, Campeche, and Yucatán.
You can find it in different natural areas called ecoregions. These include the Tamaulipan matorral and Tamaulipan mezquital. It also grows in the Veracruz dry forests and Yucatán dry forests. This tree can live from sea level up to about 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) high. The average temperature where it grows is 20 to 27 degrees Celsius (68 to 81 degrees Fahrenheit). It usually gets about 900 millimeters (35 inches) of rain each year.
How People Use Texas Ebony
Texas ebony is often planted in gardens, especially in places with dry weather. This is called xeriscaping. People like it because it has thick leaves and its flowers smell nice. It is also used in bonsai, which is the art of growing small trees in containers.
Texas Ebony in Nature
The Texas ebony tree is a "host plant" for some caterpillars. This means the caterpillars eat its leaves. Two types of caterpillars that use it are the coyote cloudywing (Achalarus toxeus) and Sphingicampa blanchardi.
The tree's seedpods are home to tiny insects called bean weevils. These include Stator beali and S. limbatus. Even though S. limbatus lives in the same area as the Texas ebony, it only eats the tree when it's planted in gardens, not in the wild.
Texas ebony is also a favorite home for an epiphyte called Bailey's ball moss (Tillandsia baileyi). An epiphyte is a plant that grows on another plant but does not harm it.
See also
In Spanish: Ebenopsis ebano para niños
