LEGUMINOSZ. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 79 
GLEDITSIA AQUATICA. 
Water Locust. 
LEGUME oval, oblique, usually one-seeded, without pulp, tardily dehiscent. Leaflets 
ovate-oblong. 
Gleditsia aquatica, Marshall, Arbust. Am. 54.—E. L. 
Q Q 
Greene, Bull. Torrey Bot. Club, xiv. 225.— Watson & 
Coulter, Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 149. 
. triacanthos, 8. Linnezus, Spec. 1057. 
. inermis, Miller, Dict. ed. 8, No. 2 (not Linnzus). — 
Du Roi, Harbk. Baum. i. 296. — Koch, Dendr. i. 9.— 
E. L. Greene, Bull. Torrey Bot. Club, xv. 110.— Sargent, 
Gen. ii. 239. — Hayne, Dendr. Fl. 218. — Elliott, Sk. ii. 
709. — De Candolle, Prodr. ii. 479. — Sprengel, Syst. 
iii. 919. — Don, Gen. Syst. ii. 428. —Spach, Hist. Vég. i. 
98.— Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. i. 398. — Dietrich, 
Syn. v. 539. —Chapman, #7. 115. — Ridgway, Proc. U. 
S. Nat. Mus. 1882, 64. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 
10th Census U. S. ix. 59. — Maximowicz, Bull. Acad. Sci. 
Garden and Forest, ii. 376. St. Pétersbourg, xxxi. 40 (Meél. Biol. xii. 455). 
G. monosperma, Walter, Fl. Car. 254.— Michaux, Fl. G. triacanthos, B. aquatica, Castiglioni, Viag. negli Stati 
Bor.-Am. ii. 257. —Schkuhr, Handb. iv. 347. — Persoon, Uniti, ii. 249. 
Syn. ii. 623 — Desfontaines, Hist. Arb. ii. 246.— Willde- G. Carolinensis, Lamarck, Dict. ii. 465 ; Ill. iii. 447, t. 857, 
now, Spec. iv. 1097; Enum. 1058; Berl. Baumz. 165. — f. 2. — Roemer & Schultes, Syst. vii. 74. 
Nouveau Duhamel, iv. 101. — Michaux f. Hist. Arb. Am. G. triacantha, Gertner, Fruct. ii. 311, t. 146, f. 3. 
iii. 169, t. 11. — Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. i. 221.— Nuttall, Asacara aquatica, Rafinesque, Sylva Tellur. 121. 
A tree, fifty to sixty feet in height, with a short trunk from two to two and a half feet in diameter, 
usually dividing, a few feet from the ground, into stout spreading and often contorted branches which 
form a wide irregular flat-topped head. The bark of the trunk is rarely more than an eighth of an 
inch thick, and is smooth, dull gray, or reddish brown, and divided by shallow fissures into small plate-like 
scales. The branchlets are glabrous and orange-brown, and in their second year are gray or reddish 
brown and marked by occasional large pale lenticels. The spines are usually compressed, simple or 
with one or two short lateral branches, straight or falcate, very sharp and rigid, three to five inches 
long, half an inch broad at the base, and dark red-brown and lustrous. The leaves are long-petiolate 
and from twelve to eighteen-foliolate, or are doubly pinnate with three or four pairs of pinne which 
increase in length towards the apex of the leaf. The petioles are slightly enlarged at the base, and, 
like the rachises, are slender, terete, and glabrous. The leaflets are ovate-oblong, usually rounded or 
rarely emarginate at the apex, unequally wedge-shaped at the base, slightly and remotely crenate, or 
often entire below the middle, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, and dull yellow-green on 
the lower. They are glabrous with the exception of a few hairs on the short stout petiolules, and are 
an inch long and from a third to half an inch broad. The flowers are produced in May and June, after 
the leaves are fully grown, in slender racemes three or four inches long, with dark purple somewhat 
puberulous peduncles. The pedicels are short and stout, occasionally geminate, purple, and puberulous. 
The flower-buds are ovate or obovate, pointed at the apex, and covered with orange-brown pubescence 
which remains on the outer surface of the calyx-tube after the flowers have expanded. The calyx-lobes 
are narrow, acute, a little pilose on the two surfaces, and as long but narrower than the green erect 
petals which are rounded at their apex. The stamens are slightly exserted, with slender filaments hairy 
towards the base and large green anthers. The ovary is long-stipitate and glabrous. The legumes, 
which hang in graceful racemes, are pulpless, an inch to two inches long, an inch broad, obliquely 
ovate, long-stalked, and crowned with short stout tips. They are thin, with thin tough papery bright 
chestnut-brown lustrous valves somewhat thickened on the margins, and contain one, or rarely two, flat 
slightly obovate seeds half an inch in length with a thin orange-brown testa, thick albumen, and 
