LEGUMINOSZ, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 13 
GLEDITSIA TEXANA. 
Locust. 
LEGuME straight, elongated, many-seeded, destitute of pulp, indehiscent. Leaflets 
oblong-ovate. 
Gleditsia Texana, Sargent, Bot. Gazette, xxxi. 1 (1901). 
A tree, from one hundred to one hundred and twenty feet in height, with a trunk rarely exceeding 
two feet and a half in diameter covered with pale smooth close bark, and erect slightly spreading 
branches. The branchlets, which are comparatively slender, more or less zigzag, and roughened by 
numerous small round lenticels, are ight orange-brown when they first appear, gray or orange-brown 
during their first year, and ashy gray the following season. The leaves are six or seven inches long, 
with a slender rachis which is at first puberulous but ultimately glabrous, and from twelve to twenty- 
two leaflets, and often bipinnate usually with six or seven pairs of pinne, the lower pairs being 
frequently reduced to single large leaflets. The leaflets are oblong-ovate, often somewhat falcate, 
rounded or acute or apiculate at the apex, obliquely rounded at the base, finely crenulate-serrate, thick 
and firm in texture, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, and from 
one half of an inch to an inch in length, with short petiolules coated while young with soft pale hairs, 
which also occur along the base of the slender orange-colored midnerves. The staminate flowers are 
dark orange-yellow, and appear toward the end of April in slender glabrous often clustered racemes, 
which, lengthening after the flowers begin to open, are finally from three to four inches in length. 
The calyx is campanulate, with acute lobes which are thickened on the margins, villose-pubescent on the 
two surfaces, and rather shorter and narrower than the puberulous petals. The stamens are exserted, 
with slender filaments villose near the base, and green anthers. The pistillate flowers are still 
unknown. The legumes, which are four or five inches long and an inch wide, are straight, much 
compressed, rounded or short-pointed at the apex, full and rounded at the broad base, thin-walled, dark 
chestnut-brown, puberulous, only slightly thickened at the margins, many-seeded, and destitute of pulp. 
The seeds are oval, compressed, dark chestnut-brown, very lustrous, and nearly half an inch in length.’ 
A few individuals only of Gleditsia Texana are now known in a single grove on the bottom-lands 
of the Brazos River, near the town of Brazoria, Texas, where it grows in dense woods composed 
principally of G@leditsia triacanthos, Platanus occidentalis, and Populus deltoidea. The peculiar 
pods which distinguish this species were first noticed in February, 1892, by Mr. E. N. Plank,’ and led 
to the study of this tree in 1899 and 1900 by Mr. B. F. Bush. 
nearly half grown on the lower Brazos before the flowers of Gle- 
ditsia Texana open, while the flowers of Gleditsia aquatica do not 
1 Resembling Gleditsia triacanthos in foliage and in the staminate 
flowers, Gleditsia Texana is distinguished from that species by its 
spineless branches and smoother pale bark. From all species of 
the genus it differs in the legumes. These resemble those of the 
many-seeded species in their general form and color and in their 
numerous seeds ; they differ from them in their much smaller size, 
thin compressed walls, with thinner margins, and in the absence of 
open until ten or twelve days after those of Gleditsia Texana have 
fallen. 
2 Elisha Newton Plank, a descendant through his father and 
mother of old New England families which had furnished sol- 
diers to the Continental army, was born on March 23, 1831, in 
the sweet pulp which surrounds their thinner lighter-colored seeds. 
From the compressed pulpless legume of Gileditsia aquatica they 
differ in form and in their much more numerous seeds. 
Known only in a single grove, and sharing something of the char- 
acter of each of the other American species which grow near it, the 
hypothesis of the hybrid origin of this tree might be considered 
were it not for the fact that the legumes of Gleditsia triacanthos are 
Wolcott, Wayne County, New York, where his grandfather had 
settled in 1813. Having received an academic education and 
studied law, he remained in New York until 1879, when he 
moved with his family to Kansas, where he became a journalist ; 
and then traveled for several years through Kansas and Texas 
delivering popular and successful lectures on literary and philo- 
sophical subjects. During these years he devoted much atten- 
