THE SUMACHS AND THE PEA FAMILY. 35 



The third Japanese leguminous tree is Gleditsia Japonica, 1 which, in most essential charac- 

 ters, resembles our North American Gleditsia triacanthos, but the leaflets are broader and 

 more lustrous, and the bark, instead of being dark brown, is quite pale. Although it does 

 not grow to the great size of the American species, the Japanese Gleditsia is, perhaps, a 

 more beautiful tree. It is (see Plate xi.) a tree sixty to seventy feet in height, with a trunk 

 occasionally three feet in diameter, and stout branches horribly armed with flattened, often 

 branched lustrous red-brown spines, two or three inches in length. The branchlets are 

 remarkably stout as compared with those of our species, and are covered with bright green 

 bark, marked with orange-colored elevated lenticular spots. The leaves are ten to twelve 

 inches long, with broad ovate-acute remote leaflets, or they are sometimes bipinnate as on our 

 species, with smaller leaflets. The male flowers (the female inflorescence I have not seen) are 

 very similar to those of Gleditsia triacanthos, although they are rather larger and the racemes 

 are longer and less closely flowered. The pods are compressed and thin-valved, like those of 

 our northern tree, ten or twelve inches long and an inch and a half broad, but the seeds, 

 instead of being placed close to the ventral suture of the pod, are sometimes nearer the 

 middle and surrounded by the pulp, which is more abundant in the Japanese than in the 

 American species. This pulp is used by the Japanese in washing cloth, and long strings of 

 the pods are displayed for sale in many towns of northern Japan, where Gleditsia Japonica 

 grows, not very abundantly, according to my observations, near the banks of streams at the 

 sea-level. It is common, and reaches its largest size on the banks of the Kisogawa and other 

 streams of central Japan, at an elevation of some two thousand feet. Here it grows sometimes 

 close to the water's edge, in rich humid soil, or is as often found at a considerable distance 

 above the water, growing on dry gravelly slopes. By Rein this tree is said to be often 

 planted in the neighborhood of villages in Japan, but I saw no specimens, except in the 

 scientific gardens of Tokyo, which did not have the appearance of growing naturally. 



As an ornamental tree, Gleditsia Japonica, as it appeared on the mountains of Japan, is a 

 more beautiful tree than any of the species common in cultivation, and it may be expected to 

 become a valuable addition to the list of exotic trees suitable for the decoration of the parks 

 and avenues of the United States and Europe. 



1 Gleditsia Japonica, Miquel, Prol. Fl. Jap. 242. Frauchet & Savatier, Enum. PI. Jap. i. 114 ; ii. 325. Maximowicz, 

 Mel. Biol. xii. 452. 



