LEGL-MINOS.-E 607 



A tree, 75-110 high, with a trunk 2-3 in diameter, usually dividing 10-15 from 

 the ground into 3 or 4 principal stems spreading slightly and forming a narrow round- 

 topped head, or occasionally sending up a tall straight shaft destitute of branches for 70- 

 80, and branchlets coated when they first appear with short dense pubescence faintly 

 tinged with red, bearing at their base the conspicuous orange-green obovate pubescent 

 bud-scales, \'-\' thick at the end of their first season, very blunt, dark brown, often slightly 

 pilose, marked by orange-colored lenticels, and roughened by the large pale broadly 

 heart-shaped leaf-scars displaying the ends of 3 or 4 conspicuous fibro-vascular bundles. 

 Bark of the trunk f '-!' thick, deeply fissured, dark gray tinged with red, and roughened by 

 small persistent scales. Wood heavy although' not hard, strong, coarse-grained, very 

 durable in contact with the soil, rich light brown tinged with red, with thin lighter colored 

 sap wood of 5 or 6 layers of annual growth; occasionally used in cabinet-making and for 

 fence-posts, rails, and in construction. The seeds were formerly used as a substitute 

 for coffee: a decoction of the fresh green pulp of the unripe fruit is used in homoeopathic 

 practice. 



Distribution. Bottom-lands in rich soil; central and western New York and Franklin 

 County, Pennsylvania, through southern Ontario and southern Michigan to southeastern 

 Minnesota, northeastern and southern Iowa, southeastern South Dakota, eastern and 

 northeastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, southwestern Arkansas and northeastern Oklahoma 

 (with isolated stations in Woods and Custer Counties and in the western parts of Cimarron 

 County) ; in Eastern Kentucky, and western and middle Tennessee; nowhere common. 



Occasionally cultivated in the gardens and parks of the eastern United States, and of 

 northern and central Europe. 



8. GLEDITSIA L. 



Trees, with furrowed bark, slender terete slightly zigzag branchlets thickened at the 

 apex and prolonged by axillary buds, thick fibrous roots, the trunk and branches often 

 armed with stout simple or branched spines or abortive branchlets developed from supra- 

 axillary or adventitious buds imbedded in the bark. Winter-buds minute, 3 or 4 together, 

 superposed, the 2 or 3 lower without scales and covered by the scar left by the falling of 

 the petiole, the upper larger, nearly surrounded by the base of the petiole and covered by 

 small scurfy scales. Leaves long-petiolate, often fascicled in earlier axils, abruptly pin- 

 nate or bipinnate, the pinnae increasing in length from the base to the apex of the leaf, 

 the lowest sometimes reduced to single leaflets; deciduous; leaflets thin, their mar- 

 gins irregularly crenate, without stipels; stipules minute, caducous. Flowers regular, 

 polygamous, minute, green or white on short pedicels, in axillary or lateral simple or 

 fascicled racemes, with minute scale-like caducous bracts; calyx campanulate, lined with 

 the disk, 3-5-lobed, the narrow lobes nearly equal; petals as many as the lobes of the calyx, 

 nearly equal; stamens 6-10, inserted with the petals on the margin of the disk, exserted; 

 filaments free, filiform, erect; anthers uniform, much smaller and abortive in the pistillate 

 flower; ovary subsessile, rarely bicarpellary, rudimentary or in the staminate flower; 

 styles short; stigma terminal, more or less dilated, often oblique; ovules 2 or many, sus- 

 pended from the angle opposite the posterior petal. Legume compressed, many-seeded, 

 elongated, straight and indehiscent, or 1-3-seeded, ovoid and tardily dehiscent. Seeds 

 transverse, ovoid to suborbicular, flattened, attached by a long slender funicle; seed-coat 

 thin, crustaceous, light brown; embryo surrounded by a layer of horny orange-colored 

 albumen; cotyledons subfoliaceous, compressed; radicle short, erect, slightly exserted. 



Gleditsia is confined to eastern North America, where three species occur, southwestern 

 Asia, China, Formosa, Japan, and west tropical Africa. It produces strong, durable, coarse- 

 grained wood. In Japan the pods are used as a substitute for soap. 



The generic name is in honor of Johann Gottlieb Gleditsch (1714-1786), professor of 

 botany at Berlin. 



