LOCUST, COFFEE-BEAN AND RED-BUD 193 



(Dalbergia), a tree of the pea family which furnishes such an In- 

 comparably handsome cabinet wood. 



There are about 500 genera and 10,000 existing species of Legu- 

 minosas, of which only 17 genera with about 32 species attain to 

 the stature of trees within the limits of the United States, and the 

 bulk of these are confined either to the subtropical coastal belt of 

 Florida or to the arid southwest. The only tree forms that are 

 widely familiar in the eastern States are the Judas-tree or red-bud 

 (Cercis), the Kentucky coffee tree (Gymnocladus), and the honey 

 locust (Gleditsia) of the family Caesalpiniaceae and the locust 

 (Robinia) of the family Papilionacese, so that our attention in 

 the present chapter will be confined to these four trees. 



THE LOCUST (rOBINIA) 



The black locust, often called the yellow locust because cf its 

 yellowish brown heart wood and yellowish white sapwood, is the 

 type of the genus Robinia, so named by Linnaeus in honor of 

 Jean and Vespasian Robin who introduced it into Europe at the 

 end of the sixteenth century, at which time the former was in charge 

 of the Garden of the Louvre. The specific name which Linnaeus 

 gave this species, pseudacacia, commemorates in latinized form 

 the common European name of false acacia by which this North 

 American tree has usually been known abroad. 



Its natural range extends from Pennsylvania to Georgia and 

 westward to Iowa but it has been extensively naturalized on our 

 western prairies as well as on the plains of Hungary. Perhaps no 

 American tree was so extensively planted in Europe, and our colo- 

 nists also, in the period immediately following the Revolution, 

 valued it highly both for its timber and for its beneficial efifect upon 

 soils. In Revolutionary France May 6 was consecrated to the 

 locust. 



It is a medium sized tree and, while it sometimes reaches a 

 height of 90 feet and a trunk diameter of 4 feet, the average tree 

 branches early and tops irregularly and is not over 50 or 60 feet 

 tall and about 20 inches in trunk diameter. The leaves, in com- 

 mon with nearly all the other members of the leguminous aUiance, 



