LEGUMINOS. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 67 
GYMNOCLADUS. 
FLowErs regular, diccious by abortion; calyx tubular, disciferous, 5-lobed, the 
lobes valvate in estivation ; petals 4 or 5, imbricated in exstivation; ovary sessile or 
slightly stipitate, 4 or many-ovuled. Legume turgid or compressed, woody, 2-valved. 
Leaves unequally bipinnate. 
Gymnocladus, Lamarck, Dict. i. 733 (in part). —A.L.de Guilandina, Linneus, Gen. ed. 2, 518 (in part). 
Jussieu, Gen. 346.— Meisner, Gen. 98. — Endlicher, Gen. Hyperanthera, Vahl, Symb. i. 30 (in part). 
1311. — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. i. 568. — Baillon, Hist. 
Pil. ii. 175, 
Trees, with stout unarmed blunt pithy branches, rough deeply fissured bark, and thick fleshy roots. 
Buds minute, depressed in pubescent cavities of the stem, two in the axil of each leaf, superposed, 
remote, the lower and smaller sterile and nearly surrounded by the enlarged base of the petiole; bud- 
scales two, ovate, rounded at the apex, coated with thick dark brown tomentum, infolded one over the 
other, accrescent with the young shoots. Leaves deciduous, alternate, bipinnate; pinne and leaflets 
usually alternate; stipules ample, foliaceous, early deciduous; leaflets membranaceous, ovate, entire, 
petiolulate. Inflorescence terminal or axillary, leafy or bracted towards the base, that of the staminate 
plant a short racemose corymb, of the pistillate plant an elongated raceme. Flowers greenish white, 
long-pedicellate, the slender pedicels developed from the axils of long lanceolate scarious caducous 
bracts, and furnished near the middle with two minute deciduous bractlets. Calyx tubular, elongated, 
ten-ribbed, lined with the thin glandular disk, five-lobed, the lobes lanceolate, acute, nearly equal, erect. 
Petals oblong 
=p? 
and twice as broad, inserted on the margin of the disk, spreading or reflexed. Stamens ten, free, 
rounded or acute at the apex, pubescent, as long as the calyx-lobes or rather longer 
inserted on the margin of the disk, erect, included ; filaments filiform, pilose, those opposite the petals 
shorter than the others; anthers oblong, uniform, attached on the back below the middle, introrse, 
two-celled, the cells opening longitudinally ; smaller and sterile in the pistillate flower. Ovary sessile 
in the bottom of the calyx-tube or slightly stipitate, acute, pilose, or glabrous, many-ovuled ; style short, 
erect, obliquely dilated into two broad stigmatic lobes, or, in the Chinese species, contracted into a 
slightly oblique capitate stigma ; rudimentary or wanting in the sterile flower; ovules suspended from 
the angle opposite the posterior petal, superposed, anatropous, the micropyle superior. Legume oblong, 
subfaleate, turgid, or slightly compressed, several-seeded, tardily dehiscent, two-valved, the woody valves 
thickened on the margins into narrow wings, pulpy between the seeds. Seed ovoid, slightly obovoid or 
subglobose, suspended by a long slender funicle ; testa thick, bony, three-coated, brown, and opaque. 
Embryo surrounded by a thin layer of horny albumen ; cotyledons ovate, thick and fleshy, the radicle 
short, erect. 
Gymnocladus is now confined to the temperate parts of eastern North America and to southern 
China, although there is evidence that it existed in Europe during the Tertiary period. Only two 
species are known. Gymnocladus dioicus, the type of the genus, inhabits America, and Gymnocladus 
Chinensis? several of the southern and southwestern provinces of China. 
Gymnocladus is slightly astringent and purgative. The seeds of Gymnocladus dioicus were 
1 Saporta, Origine Paléontologique des Arbres, 20. Hooker Icon. xv. 9, t. 1412. — Hemsley, Jour. Linn. Soc. xxiii. 208 ; 
2 Baillon, Compt. Rend. Assoc. Franc. pour l’Avanc. Sci.1874, 418, Garden and Forest, ii. 266.— Nicholson, Garden and Forest, ii. 
t.4; Bull. Soc. Linn. Par. 1875, 33; Dict. Bot. i. 781. — Oliver, 139. 
