General: Little-leaved Palo Verde (Parkinsonia microphylla) is a small tree with green, photosynthesizing bark. The leaves are 3-4 inches long, sessile, and twice compound. There are 8 or more secondary leaflets. The yellow flowers are weakly bilateral with the stamens sticking out and free sepals. The tree is armed with small thorns in the leaf axils.

The flowers are lighter yellow than those of the related Blue Palo Verde (Parkinsonia florida), and the bark stays green as it gets older (the bark of blue Palo Verde becomes brown with age).

Little-leaved Palo Verde can be a common component of vegetation communities in dry, well-drained gravelly and rocky areas along washes in desert flats and on bajadas into the lower mountains in the Lower Sonoran (Creosote-Bursage Flats) and Upper Sonoran (Mojave Desert Scrub) life zones at elevations of 500-3,500 ft.

Around Las Vegas, look for Little-leaved Palo Verde in southern parts of Lake Mead NRA (Fire Canyon holds the northern-most population) and south into southern California and Arizona. This species does not naturally occur in the Las Vegas Valley area.

Family: Legume (Fabaceae). Formerly Yellow Paloverde.