Handbook of Trees of the Northern S-^ 



ATES AM) 



291 



The Water Locust attains a height of 50 or 

 60 ft. and its short trunk is sometimes 2 or 3 

 ft. in diameter. It divides usually within a 

 few feet of the ground into several branches 

 forming a bushy rounded top more or less flat- 



tened above, with 



iturk'd 



ipiny 



br 



Sometimes the trunk also is beset with for- 

 midable great rigid branching thorns. The 

 bark of trunk is thin, firm, rough with small 

 corky excrescences and is sometimes sparingly 

 ecaly. It inhabits only deep swamps, the bor- 

 ders of sloughs and low river banks subject 

 to long inundation, in company with the But- 

 ton-bush, Forestiera, Planer-tree, Bald Cypress, 

 Water and Tupelo Gums, various Willows, etc. 

 and is most abundant and of largest size in the 

 lower Mississippi valley. 



The wood, of which a cu. ft. when absolutely 

 dry weighs 45.70 lbs., is heavy, hard and 

 strong, of a reddish brown color with thick 

 pale yellow sap-wood. 2 



Leaves 5-10 in. long with 5-7 pairs of pinnatf 

 or bi-pinnate pinnae of 5-12 pairs of ovate to ob- 

 long leaflets, usually oblique at base, rounded at 

 apex, finely crenate-serrate, thick and firm, 

 lustrous dark green above, paler beneath. Flowers 

 appearing in ,Tune in slender elongated racemes. 

 Fruit: pods lustrous brown, thin, 1-2 in. long, in 

 pendent racemes, oblique-ovate, pointed at both 

 ends, with long slender stalk, without pulp and 

 containing a solitary (or sometimes 2) flat sub- 

 orbicular yellow-brown seed 14 in. in diameter. 



1. Syu. Okditsia vionosperma Walt. 



2. A. W., V, 109. 



