40 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. LEGUMINOS&. 
length and are filled with nectar and very fragrant. The pedicels, developed from the axils of minute 
caducous bractlets, are slender, half an inch long, and dark red or red tinged with green. The calyx 
is conspicuously gibbous on the upper side, pilose within and without, ciliate on the margin, and dark 
green blotched with red, especially on the upper side; the lower lobe is acuminate and much longer 
than the triangular lateral lobes; the upper divisions are short and nearly triangular. The petals 
are pure white with the exception of the large pale yellow blotch which marks the inner surface of the 
The fruit, which attains nearly its full size by the end of July, ripens late in the autumn 
It is borne in stout 
standard. 
and hangs on the branches until the end of winter or the beginning of spring. 
thick-stemmed racemes, and is three or four inches long and half an inch broad, with bright red-brown 
valves, and is usually four to eight-seeded. The seeds are three sixteenths of an inch long, and dark 
orange-brown with irregular darker markings. 
Robinia Pseudacacia naturally inhabits the slopes of the Apalachian Mountains from Locust 
Ridge in Marion County, Pennsylvania, to northern Georgia; it has become widely naturalized in most 
of the territory of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, and is perhaps indigenous on 
Crowley’s Ridge in northeastern Arkansas and in some parts of western Arkansas and of eastern Indian 
Territory... In its native forests the Locust is nowhere common and does not occupy the ground 
exclusively, but mingles singly or in groups of two or three with the Hickory, the Black Walnut, 
the Ash, the White Oak, the Cucumber Magnolia, and other trees which thrive in the deep rich soil 
in which the Locust grows to its largest size and produces its most valuable timber. It is most common 
and attains its best development on the western slopes of the mountains of West Virginia. 
favorable situations and at lower elevations, especially on gravelly soil, it spreads by underground stems 
into broad thickets of small and often stunted trees, and is now common in many parts of the northern 
In less 
and eastern states. 
Robinia Pseudacacia is one of the most valuable timber-trees of the American forest. The wood 
is heavy, exceedingly hard and strong, close-grained, and very durable in contact with the ground. It 
is brown or more rarely light green with pale yellow sapwood composed of two or three layers of annual 
growth only ; it contains numerous obscure medullary rays, the layers of annual growth being clearly 
marked by two or three rows of large open ducts. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 
0.7333, a cubic foot weighing 45.70 pounds. It is extensively used in shipbuilding,” for all sorts of 
posts, and other purposes where durability in contact with the ground is sought, in construction and 
in turnery. It is preferred to the wood of any other North American tree for treenails, and was once 
largely exported in this form ; and it is excellent fuel, burning slowly with a clear bright flame.’ 
1 Engelmann, who explored this region fifty years ago and be- 
fore it had been invaded by settlers, through whose agency Robinia 
Pseudacacia has become so widely scattered in the United States, 
first noticed it west of the Mississippi River growing, as he always 
believed, indigenously. In the trans-Mississippi region it does not, 
except in cultivation, attain a large size, and is usually a low shrub. 
It is probable that the Indians of Virginia, who knew the value 
of the wood of the Locust and made their bows from it, carried the 
tree from the mountains into the low country, and so helped to 
spread it beyond the limits of its native forests. It appears to 
have been common in the neighborhood of the coast when Virginia 
was first settled by Europeans. William Strachey, who visited the 
colony on James River in 1610 and printed the first mention of this 
tree, found that “by the dwellings of the salvages arc bay-trees, 
wild roses and a kynd of low tree, which beares a cod like to the 
(Historie of 
Travaile into Virginia Britannia, ed. Major, 130.) The Indians, he 
peas, but nothing so big: we take yt to be locust.” 
tells us, made “ their bows of some plant, eyther of the locust-tree 
or of weech.” (Jbid. 105.) 
The English in Virginia soon learned the value of Locust timber, 
for, “ being obliged to run up with all the expedition possible such 
little houses as might serve them to dwell in, till they could find 
leisure to build larger and more convenient ones, they erected each 
of their little hovels on four only of these trees (the Locust-tree of 
Virginia), pitched into the ground to support the four corners: 
many of these posts are yet standing,and not only the parts under- 
ground, but likewise those above, still perfectly sound.” (Mark 
Catesby, Hortus Britanno-Americanus, 34. London, 1763.) 
2 Mr. Ebenezer Jessup, writing to the Gentleman’s Magazine in 
1791, proposed a scheme for planting the Locust on a large scale 
in the New Forest with the idea of supplying the British navy with 
timber, its value in shipbuilding being well established at this time. 
(Ixi. 699.) Locust treenails, according to Loudon (Arb. Brit. ii. 
619), sold in Philadelphia, in 1819, at ten dollars a thousand, and 
fifty to one hundred thousand were annually exported from that 
city alone to England. 
8 Mathieu, Flore Forestiere, ed. 3, 108. 
