LEGUMINOSA. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 13 
GLEDITSIA. 
FLowers regular, polygamous by abortion; calyx campanulate, disciferous, 3 to 
5-lobed, the lobes valvate or slightly imbricated in estivation; petals 3 or 5, imbri- 
cated in estivation; ovary subsessile, 2 or many-ovuled. Legume indehiscent or 
tardily 2-valved. Leaves abruptly pinnate or bipinnate. 
Gleditsia, Linnzus, Gen. ed. 2, 480.— Adanson, Fam. Pi. Melilobus, Mitchell, Act. Nat. Cur. viii. Appx. 215. — 
ii. 319. — Meisner, Gen. 100. — Endlicher, Gen. 13811. — Rafinesque, Sylva Tellur. 121. 
Bentham & Hooker, Gen. i. 568. — Baillon, Hist. Pl. ii. Asacara, Rafinesque, Neogen. 2. 
175. 
Trees, with furrowed bark, terete branchlets, minute subpetiolar buds, and thick fibrous roots, the 
branches and trunk often armed with stout simple or branched spines or abortive branches developed 
from supra-axillary or adventitious buds. Leaves deciduous, alternate, often fascicled in earlier axils, 
abruptly pinnate or bipimnate often on the same individual, the lower pinne sometimes reduced to 
single leaflets; stipules minute, caducous; leaflets membranaceous, their margins irregularly crenate, 
destitute of stipels. Flowers minute, green or white, short-pedicellate, in axillary or lateral simple or 
fascicled racemes. Bracts minute, scale-like, caducous. Calyx campanulate, lined with the disk, three 
to five-lobed, the narrow lobes only imperfectly inclosing the petals in the bud, nearly equal. Petals 
as many as the lobes of the calyx, nearly equal. Stamens six to ten, inserted with the petals on the 
margin of the disk, exserted ; filaments free, filiform, erect ; anthers uniform, attached on the back 
below the middle, introrse, two-celled, the cells opening longitudinally ; much smaller and abortive in 
the pistillate flower. Ovary inserted in the bottom of the disk, subsessile, rarely bicarpellary, rudi- 
mentary or wanting in the staminate flower; style short; stigma terminal, more or less dilated, often 
declinate ; ovules two or many, suspended from the angle opposite the posterior petal, superposed, 
anatropous, the micropyle superior. Legume many or rarely one or two-seeded, elongated, straight, 
compressed, pulpy between the seeds, indehiscent, the walls thin and membranaceous ; or ovate, desti- 
tute of pulp, and tardily dehiscent, or slightly turgid and indehiscent with hard woody walls. Seed 
transverse, obovate, or compressed, attached by a long slender funicle ; testa thin, crustaceous, light 
brown. Embryo surrounded by a layer of horny albumen; cotyledons subfoliaceous, compressed ; 
radicle short, erect, slightly exserted. 
Gleditsia is represented in the flora of eastern America by two species, one of which is the type 
of the genus; it occurs on the mountains of west tropical Africa,’ in the Orient,’ and in China and 
Japan ;* and in the Tertiary period existed in Kurope.* In China four species and possibly more, as the 
Chinese Gleditsias are still very imperfectly known, are found scattered from the northern to the 
southern provinces of the empire.” 
Many of the parts of Gleditsia are astrmgent, and several of the species produce strong, durable, 
1 Gleditsia Africana, Bentham, Trans. Linn. Soc. xxv. 304. 8 Gleditsia Japonica, Miquel, Prol. Fl. Jap. 242. — Franchet & 
2 Gleditsia Caspica, Desfontaines, Hist. Arb. ii. 247. — Koch, Savatier, Enum. Pl. Jap. i. 114; ii. 327. —Maximowicz, 1. cv. A 
Dendr. i. 10.— Boissier, Fl. Orient. ii. 631.— Maximowicz, Bull. handsome tree, widely scattered through the empire, especially in 
Acad. Sci. St. Pétersbourg, xxxi. 37 (Mc. Biol. xii. 451). This is a the northern islands, where it grows near the borders of streams 
small tree generally distributed through the forest region of the and in the forests which cover the lower slopes of the mountains, 
province of Talysch south of the Caspian Sea, and in northern and is often cultivated in the neighborhood of villages. 
Persia, and is to be distinguished from Gleditsia triacanthos by its 4 Saporta, Origine Paléontologique des Arbres, 20. 
leaflets, which are twice as large as those of that species, and by 5 Maximowicz, I. c.— Hemsley, Jour. Linn. Soc. xxiii. 208, t. 5 ; 
its shorter pods. Garden and Forest, ii. 266. 
