LEGUMINOSZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. oT 
CLADRASTIS LUTEA. 
Yellow Wood. Virgilia. 
Cladrastis lutea, Koch, Dendr. i. 6. — Sargent, Garden and i. 163. — Dietrich, Syn. ii. 1501. — Loudon, Arb. Brit. ii. 
Forest, ii. 375. 565, t. 78. 
Virgilia lutea, Michaux f. Hist. Arb. Am. iii. 266, t.3.— CC. tinctoria, Rafinesque, Neogen.1; Med. Fi. ii. 210; New 
Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. i. 309. — Nuttall, Gen. i. 284. — Sylva, iii. 83. — Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. i. 391. — 
Hayne, Dendr. Fl. 53.— Loiseleur, Herb. Amat. iii. t. Walpers, Rep. i. 807. —Chapman, F/. 113. — Sargent, 
197. — De Candolle, Prodr. ii. 98.— Sprengel, Syst. iv. Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 57. — Watson 
pt. il. 171. — Don, Gen. Syst. ii. 112. — Spach, Hist. Vég. & Coulter, Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 127. 
Cladrastis lutea is a tree, sometimes fifty or sixty feet in height, with a trunk from a foot and 
a half to two feet or exceptionally to four feet in diameter, usually divided six or seven feet from the 
ground into two or three stems, and rather slender wide-spreading more or less pendulous brittle 
branches forming a wide graceful head. The bark of the trunk varies from an eighth to a quarter of 
an inch in thickness and has a smooth silvery gray or light brown surface, while that of the branches 
is lighter colored. The branchlets are clothed with pubescence when they appear, but soon become 
glabrous, and during their first season are light brown tinged more or less with green, especially on the 
shaded side, very smooth and lustrous, and covered with numerous darker colored lenticels; during 
their first winter they are bright red-brown, still lustrous, and marked with large elevated leaf-scars 
surrounding the buds, and the following year are dark brown and less lustrous. The leaves, which 
appear in early spring, are eight to twelve inches long ; the leaflets are three or four inches in length 
and an inch and a half to two inches in breadth, the terminal one rather shorter than the others and 
from three to three and a half inches broad. The leaves turn a bright clear yellow rather late in the 
autumn some time before falling. The flowers, which appear in the middle of June in panicles twelve 
or fourteen inches long and five or six inches broad, are slightly fragrant. The fruit, which is fully 
grown by the middle of August, ripens in September, when the legumes soon fall to the ground and 
then open, the seed germinating the following spring. 
Cladrastis lutea is one of the rarest and most local of the trees of eastern North America ; it is 
found on the limestone cliffs of the Kentucky and Dick Rivers in central Kentucky, in central 
Tennessee where, perhaps, in the neighborhood of Nashville it is more abundant and attains a larger 
size than elsewhere, and in a few localities on the western slopes of the high mountains of eastern 
Tennessee, and in Cherokee County, North Carolina. It generally grows in rich soil, often overhanging 
the banks of rapid streams, and its usual companions in the forest are the Black Walnut, the White 
Ash, the White Oak, the Mulberry, the Butternut, the Shellbark Hickory, and the Tulip Poplar. 
Cladrastis lutea is one of the most beautiful flowering trees of the American forests. It was 
introduced into cultivation by the elder Michaux, and has become one of the most valued ornamental 
trees in the United States and in those parts of Europe where the summer sun is sufficiently hot to 
ripen the wood thoroughly and insure the free production of flowers which appear in profusion only in 
alternate years. It is hardy as far north as New England and the province of Ontario. Few insects 
prey on the handsome foliage of Cladrastis lutea ;* fungal disease is unknown to it, and the brittle- 
ness of the branches, which are often broken by high winds, is the only objection to the Virgilia® as an 
ornament to the garden and the lawn, which it graces with the lightness of its port, its smooth delicate 
bark, rich and ample foliage, and handsome flowers. 
1 Occasionally leaf-eating insects and red spiders slightly injure Virgilia; it is also sometimes called Yellow Wood and Gopher. 
this tree in cultivation. Wood in the region where it naturally grows. 
2 In cultivation Cladrastis lutea is almost universally known as 
