216 FAMILIAR TREES AND THEIR LEAVES. 



ter, which are ripe in October. The tree grows from 

 45 to 80 and occasionally 110 feet high, and has few 

 branches. In the South its seeds were at one time 

 used as a substitute for coffee. In the Public Garden, 

 Boston, not far from the path leading to Newbury 

 Street, there is a very handsomely proportioned but 

 rather small specimen perhaps 40 feet tall. The 

 Kentucky coffee-tree is a native of rich woods, and 

 is common from western New York to Minnesota 

 and Arkansas. 



Honey Locust. The hone y locnst is a tree which 

 Gieditschia boys do not care to climb, for an 



tnacanthos. ^ v i ous re ason ; its murderous-look- 

 ing thorns, which grow on the trunk in formidable 

 bunches, are altogether too threatening for the average 

 juvenile climber. The leaves are sometimes twice 

 compound, but not very often ; they suggest a sort 

 of toothed edge, but so indistinctly that the fact 

 would escape notice unless the leaflet was subjected 

 to close scrutiny. The inconspicuous and greenish- 

 colored flowers appear in short spikes in early sum- 

 mer ; the long, red -brown, straplike, twisted pods 

 ripen in late autumn, and contain most remarkably 

 hard, shiny brown, flattened seeds ; the pod is filled 

 between the seeds with a greenish-yellow, sweet pulp 

 much relished by the " small boy," who respects the 

 tree's defenses, and waits for the fruit to drop. 



