LEGUMINOS 4. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 39 
ROBINIA PSEUDACACIA. 
Locust. Acacia. Yellow Locust. 
FLoweErs white, in slender loose racemes. 
Robinia Pseudacacia, Linneus, Spec. 722. — Miller, Dict. 
ed. 8, No. 1.— Du Roi, Harbk. Baum. ii. 320. — Mar 
shall, Arbust. Am. 133. — Wangenheim, Nordam. Holz. 
16, t. 7. — Castiglioni, Ving. negli Stati Uniti, ii. 367. — 
LHeritier, Stirp. Nov. 158. — Schmidt, Oestr. Baum. i. 
31, t. 32.— Walter, Fl. Car. 186.— Gertner, Fruct. ii. 
307, t. 145. — Willdenow, Spec. iii. 1131; Enum. 769; 
Berl. Bawmz. 372.— Schoellenbach, Abbild. Baume, ii. 
67, t. 42.— Michaux, Fl. Bor.-Am. ii. 65.— Nouveau 
Duhamel, ii. 60, t. 16. — Poiret, Lam. Dict. vi. 222; Til. 
lil. 163, t. 606.— Persoon, Syn. ii. 311. — Desfontaines, 
Hist. Arb. ii. 302. — Michaux f. Hist. Arb. Am. iii. 245, 
t. 1.— Pursh, 77. Am. Sept. ii. 487. — Nuttall, Gen. ii. 
Legume smooth. Branches naked. 
dolle, Prodr. ii. 261. — Sprengel, Syst. iii. 247. — Tor- 
rey, Fl. N. Y. i. 165. — Hooker, Fl. Bor.-Am. i. 140. — 
Audubon, Birds, t. 104.— Don, Gen. Syst. ii. 237. — 
Spach, Hist. Vég. i. 258. — Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. 
i. 294. — Bigelow, Fl. Boston. ed. 3, 295. — Dietrich, Syn. 
iv. 1053. — Darlington, Fl. Cestr. ed. 3, 63. — Chapman, 
Fl. 94. — Curtis, Rep. Geolog. Surv. N. Car. 1860, iii. 
48.— Baillon, Hist. Pl. 11. 209, f. 159. — Koch, Dendr. 
i. 55. — Emerson, Trees Mass. ed. 2, ii. 523, t. — Will- 
komm, Forst. Fl. ed. 2, 930.— Ridgway, Proc. U. S. 
Nat. Mus. 1882, 65.— Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 
10th Census U. S. ix. 55.— Watson & Coulter, Gray's 
Man. ed. 6, 134. 
118. — Hayne, Dendr. Fl. 140. — Elliott, Sk. ii. 242.— Pseudacacia odorata, Moench, Meth. 145. 
Jaume St. Hilaire, Traité des Arbres, t. 71.—De Can- RB. fragilis, Salisbury, Prodr. 336. 
A tree, seventy to eighty feet in height, with a trunk three or four feet in diameter, and slender 
brittle usually erect branches which form a narrow oblong head. The bark of the trunk on fully grown 
individuals varies from an inch to an inch and a half in thickness; it is deeply furrowed and dark 
brown tinged with red, the surface being broken into small square persistent scales. The branchlets, 
which are terete or sometimes slightly many-angled, especially on vigorously growing plants, are marked 
with small pale scattered lenticels, and when they appear are coated with short appressed silvery white 
pubescence. This soon wears off, and during their first season they are pale green and puberulous, 
turning light reddish brown towards autumn, when they are glabrous or nearly so. 
they unfold are covered with silvery pubescence, which, however, soon disappears ; they are composed 
‘of seven to nineteen leaflets, and vary from eight to fourteen inches in length, with slender puberulous 
The leaves when 
petioles which are grooved on the upper side and swollen at the base. The stipules are half an inch 
long, linear, subulate, membranaceous at first, coated with pubescence, and tipped with a small tuft of 
caducous brown hairs; ultimately they develop into hard woody straight or slightly recurved spines, 
which do not disappear for many years and increase in size with the growth of the branches until they 
are sometimes more than an inch long.’ The leaflets are ovate, rounded or slightly truncate and 
minutely apiculate at the apex, very thin, dull dark blue-green on the upper, and pale on the lower 
surface, and glabrous at maturity with the exception of the slight puberulence which covers the under 
side of the slender midribs; they are an inch and a half to two inches long, and half an inch to three 
quarters of an inch broad, and are borne on stout petiolules an eighth of an inch to a quarter of an 
inch in length. The stipels are minute, linear, membranaceous, and early deciduous. The leaves turn 
pale clear yellow late in the autumn, just before falling. The flowers, which open late in May or early 
in June, are produced in loose puberulous racemes four or five inches long ; they are nearly an inch in 
1 The stipules of Robinia Pseudacacia appear to be more devel- the other species this protection is afforded by bristly hairs or by 
oped on the lower than on the upper branches, and this fact leads the gummy substance which exudes from the small globose glands 
Sir John Lubbock to suppose that they serve to protect the young that cover the branches of R. viscosa, a species also provided, 
growing branches presumably from herbivorous animals, while in however, with spiny stipules. (Jour. Linn. Soc. xxviii. 228.) 
