46U WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



The Common Locust Tree. R. pseudacdcia. L. 



Figured in Audubon's Birds, II, Plate 104. Figured by Michaux, Plate 76. 

 Three varieties of the tree figured in Loudon's Arboretum, V, 71. 



The locust, in Massachusetts, is never of a first rate size or 

 height, but is often a graceful and always an extremely pictu- 

 resque tree. The trunk rises sometimes directly upwards to a 

 considerable height without branches, sometimes inclined to one 

 side, and very irregular and bare, sometimes, on the edge of a 

 wood, feathering down to the ground on one side. The bark is 

 thick, and, on old trees, very deeply and irregularly furrowed 

 with long furrows, and of an ashen or granite color. On the 

 branches it is ash gray, and on the slender, wand-like spray, 

 purple or purplish green. The soft and velvety foliage is too 

 smooth to retain the dust, and is often seen, bright and clean, on 

 the side of a dusty road. While the heart of the tree is so liable 

 to the attack of insects, that several trees are not often seen 

 together which do not present a dead or dying limb, the leaves 

 seem peculiarly exempt, and often show like an image of the 

 freshness and vigor of youth, in contrast with the melancholy 

 one of premature decay. 



Flowers very fragrant and beautiful, in long pendulous ra- 

 cemes from the axil of the upper leaves. The partial flower- 

 stalks half an inch long. Calyx an irregular, purplish tube, 

 ending in 2 obtuse and 3 acute segments. Corolla white, but- 

 terfly-shaped. The lower petal nearly round, notched at the 

 end and reflected, yellow in the middle. Side petals oblong, 

 irregular, on a long claw, meeting below the keel, which is 

 formed of 2 petals grown together and embracing the stamens ; 

 these united, form a tube, in the middle of which is the curved 

 style, with its capitate stigma. 



The leaves are compound, the leaf-stalk channelled above, 

 and angled beneath. The leaflets are from 9 to 25, on short 

 petioles, oblong, elliptic or egg-shaped, rounded at the extremity, 

 with a short point, smooth or silken-downy, light green above, 

 lighter beneath. At the foot of each is a single, minute, linear 

 stipule, about as long as the partial footstalk. Each leaf is 

 folded on itself before opening, and the half-expanded leaflets 



