LEGUMINOS^ 



557 



A tree, 75-140 high, with a trunk 2-3 or occasionally 5-6 in diameter, 

 slender spreading somewhat pendulous branches forming a broad open rather flat- 

 topped head, brauchlets marked by minute lenticels, at first light reddish brown 

 and slightly puberulous, soon becoming lustrous and red tinged with green and in 

 their second year greenish brown, and armed with stout rigid long-pointed simple 



or 3-forked spines at first red and bright chestnut-brown when fully grown, or rarely 

 unarmed. Bark of the trunk ^-f thick, divided by deep fissures into long narrow 

 longitudinal ridges and roughened on the surface by small persistent scales. "Wood 

 hard, strong, coarse-grained, very durable in contact with the ground, red or bright 

 red-brown, with thin pale sapwood of 10-12 layers of annual growth; largely used 

 for fence-posts and rails, for the hubs of wheels, and in construction. 



Distribution. Borders of streams and intervale lands, in moist fertile soil, usually 

 growing singly or occasionally covering almost exclusively considerable areas; less 

 commonly on dry sterile gravelly hills; western slope of the Alleghany Mountains of 

 Pennsylvania, westward through Ontario and Michigan to southeastern Minnesota, 

 eastern Nebraska and Kansas, and the Indian Territory, and southward to northern 

 Alabama and Mississippi and to the valley of the Brazos River, Texas; attaining 

 its largest size in the valleys of small streams in southern Indiana and Illinois; 

 now often naturalized in the region east of the Alleghany Mountains. 



Often cultivated as an ornamental and shade tree in all countries of temperate 

 climates. 



2. Gleditsia Texana, Sarg. Locust. 



Leaves 6'-7' long, with a slender rachis at first puberulous, ultimately glabrous, 

 and 12-22-foliolulate, or often bipinnate, usually with 6 or 7 pairs of pinnae, the 

 lower pairs frequently reduced to single large leaflets; leaflets oblong-ovate, often 

 somewhat falcate, rounded or acute or apiculate at the apex, obliquely rounded 

 at the base, finely crenately serrate, thick and firm in texture, dark green and lus- 

 trous above, pale below, ^'-V long, with short petiolules coated while young, like the 

 base of the slender orange-colored midribs, with soft pale hairs. Flo"wers appear- 

 ing toward the end of April, the staminate dark orange-yellow, in slender glabrous 

 often clustered racemes lengthening after the flowers begin to open and finally 3' -4' 

 long; calyx campanulate, with acute lobes thickened on the margins, villose-pubescent 

 and rather shorter and narrower than the puberulous petals; stamens with slender 



