46 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
LEGUMINOS 2. 
Robinia viscosa inhabits the high mountains of Carolina, and has now become naturalized through 
cultivation in many parts of the United States east of the Mississippi River and as far north as eastern 
Massachusetts.! 
The wood? of Robinia viscosa is heavy, hard, and close-grained, with several rows of open ducts 
clearly marking the layers of annual growth, and many thin medullary rays. It is brown with light 
yellow sapwood composed of two or three thick layers of annual growth. The specific gravity of the 
absolutely dry wood is 0.8094, a cubic foot weighing 50.44 pounds. 
Robinia viscosa was first noticed by William Bartram* in the summer of 1776 on the mountains 
between the headwaters of the Savannah and Tennessee rivers.’ 
It was next found by the French 
botanist Michaux® in 1790 in the same region, and was introduced by him into his garden near Charles- 
ton, from which he sent it the next year to his son in Paris. 
French physician Lemonnier * in his garden at Montreuil.” 
It was first planted in Europe by the 
The excellent habit of the Clammy Locust, 
its handsome foliage and beautiful flowers, soon attracted the attention of horticulturists, and it has 
always been a popular garden plant in the United States and in Europe.® 
1 Robinia viscosa, which appears to be one of the rarest of all 
our trees, was not seen growing wild in the forests of the southern 
Alleghany Mountains from the time of the Michaux until 1882, 
when it was rediscovered by Mr. John Donnell Smith near High- 
lands, Macon County, North Carolina, covering a rocky slope 
known as Buzzard Ridge at an elevation of four thousand five 
hundred feet above the sea-level, and growing as a shrub with 
stems only a few feet high. It has not been seen in any other 
locality growing wild. Bartram and Michaux speak of it as a tree 
forty feet high, and it often attains that height in cultivation. 
2 Taken from a cultivated tree growing in Essex County, Mas- 
sachusetts. 
% See i. 16. 
4 Trav. 335. 
5 See i. 58. 
6 Louis Guillaume Lemonnier (1717-1799), brother of the 
astronomer, Pierre Louis Lemonnier, a distinguished Parisian 
physician, was appointed on the death of Bernard de Jussieu in 
1777 professor of botany in the Jardin du Roi, which he is said 
to have greatly enriched. He soon after abandoned his chair in 
favor of Antoine Louis de Jussieu and was appointed first physi- 
cian to Louis XVI. Ruined by the Revolution, Lemonnier retired 
to Montreuil, where he opened a small shop for the sale of herbs, 
and in his garden cultivated many American plants given to him 
by his friends, the two Michaux, passing in these occupations what 
he declared were the happiest days of his life. His publications 
relating to plants are not numerous or important. They include a 
Lettre sur la Cultivation du Café (Paris, 1773) and a few short 
memoirs. Monnieria, a name given by Linnzus to an annual plant 
of tropical America, preserves the memory of this modest and 
public-spirited man of science, to whose value, according to the 
testimony of his contemporaries, scant justice is done in the pub- 
lished results of his observations. 
7 Michaux f. Hist. Arb. Am. iii. 264. 
8 Aiton, Hort. Kew. ed. 2, iv. 323. — Loudon, Arb. Brit. ii. 626, 
f. 306, v. t. 87. 
Robinia bella-rosea, Hort., a plant sometimes found in gardens 
with usually glabrous leaflets, rose-colored flowers, and red branches 
without glandular hairs, is perhaps a hybrid between this species 
and R. Pseudacacia. (Nicholson, Dict. Gard.) Robinia dubia 
(Desvaux, Jour. Bot. iv. 204) was considered by De Candolle 
(Prodr. ii. 261) a garden hybrid of similar parentage. 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE. 
Puate CXV. Rosinia VIScosa. 
. A pistil, enlarged. 
DONA AP wd 
. A flowering branch, natural size. 
A flower, front view, natural size. 
. A staminal tube, the upper stamen detached, enlarged. 
. Vertical section of a pistil, enlarged. 
. A raceme of fruit, natural size. 
. A legume, one of the valves removed, natural size. 
. Vertical section of a seed, enlarged. 
. An embryo, much magnified. 
