LEGUMINOS^ 



573 



tinged with green, in loose puberulous racemes 4'-5' long; calyx conspicuously gib- 

 bous on the upper side, ciliate on the margins, dark green blotched with red, espe- 

 cially on the upper side, the lower lobe acuminate and much longer than the nearly 

 triangular lateral and upper lobes; petals pure white, with a large pale yellow blotch 

 marking the inner surface of the standard. Fruit ripening late in the autumn, 3'-4:' 

 long and i' wide, with bright red-brown valves, usually 4-8-seeded, mostly persistent 

 until the end of winter or early spring; seeds ^V long, dark orange-brown, with 

 irregular darker markings. 



A tree, 70-80 high, with a trunk 3-4 in diameter, small brittle usually erect 

 branches forming a narrow oblong head, and slender terete or sometimes slightly 

 many-angled branchlets marked by small pale scattered lenticels, coated at first 

 with short appressed silvery white deciduous pubescence, pale green and puberulous 

 during their first season, becoming light reddish brown and glabrous or nearly so 

 toward autumn. Bark of the trunk I'-l^' thick, deeply furrowed, dark brown 



tinged with red, and covered by small square persistent scales. "Wood heavy, exceed- 

 ingly hard and strong, close-grained, very durable in contact with the ground, brown 

 or rarely light green, with pale yellow sapwood of 2 or 3 layers of annual growth; 

 extensively used in shipbuilding, for all sorts of posts, in construction and turnery; 

 preferred for treenails, and valued as fuel. 



Distribution. Slopes of the Appalachian Mountains,' Pennsylvania, to northern 

 Georgia; now widely naturalized in most of the territory of the United States 

 east of the Rocky Mountains, and perhaps indigenous as a low shrub in northeastern 

 and western Arkansas and in the Indian Territory; nowhere common; in the Ap- 

 palachian forest growing singly or in small groups; most abundant and of its largest 

 size on the western slopes of the Alleghanies of West Virginia; often spreading by 

 underground stems into broad thickets of small and often stunted trees. 



Formerly much planted as an ornamental and timber tree in the eastern states; 

 very frequently used in Europe, with numerous seminal varieties of peculiar foliage 

 or habit, for the decoration of parks and gardens, and to shade the streets of cities. 



2. Robinia Neo-Mexicana, Gray. Locust. 



Leaves 6'-12' long, with stout pubescent petioles, and 15-21 leaflets; stipules 

 chartaceous, covered with long silky brown hairs, becoming at maturity stout 



