LEGUMINOS.E 609 



roughened on the surface by small persistent scales. Wood hard, strong, coarse-grained, 

 very durable in contact with the ground, red or bright red-bro\vn, with thin pale sapwood 

 of 10-12 layers of annual growth; largely used for fence-posts and rails, for the hubs of 

 wheels, and in construction. 



Distribution. Borders of streams and intervale lands, in moist fertile soil, usually 

 growing singly or occasionally covering almost exclusively considerable areas; less com- 

 monly on dry sterile gravelly hills; western slope of the Alleghany Mountains of Penn- 

 sylvania, westward through southern Ontario and southern Michigan to southeastern 

 Minnesota, southern Iowa, southeastern South Dakota, eastern Nebraska, eastern 

 Kansas, and Oklahoma to the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River (near Alva, Woods County) 

 and to creek valleys near Cache, Comanche County (G. W. Stevens), and southward to 

 northern Alabama, Mississippi and western Florida and to the valley of the Brazos River, 

 eastern Texas; and in the canon of Paloduro Creek near Canyon, Randall County, 

 northwestern Texas (E. J. Palmer); in Pennsylvania and West Virginia occasionally 

 on the eastern slopes of the Appalachian Mountains; attaining its largest size in the val- 

 leys of small streams in southern Indiana and Illinois; now often naturalized in the region 

 east of the Alleghany Mountains. The var. inermis, the prevailing form in Taney County, 

 southern Missouri. 



Often cultivated as an ornamental and shade tree in all countries of temperate climates. 



2. Gleditsia texana Sarg. Locust. 



Leaves 6'-7' long, 12-22-foliolulate, with a slender rachis at first puberulous, ulti- 

 mately glabrous, or often bipinnate, usually with 6 or 7 pairs of pinnae, the lower pairs 

 frequently reduced to single large leaflets; leaflets oblong-ovate, often somewhat falcate, 





Fig. 558 



rounded or acute or apiculate at apex, obliquely rounded at base, finely crenately serrate, 

 thick and firm in texture, dark green and lustrous above, pale below, \'-\.' long, with a 

 short petiolule coated while young, like the base of the slender orange-colored midrib, 

 with soft pale hairs. Flowers appearing toward the end of April, the staminate dark 

 orange-yellow, in slender glabrous often clustered racemes lengthening after the flowers 

 begin to open and finally 3'-4' in length; calyx campanulate, with acute lobes thickened on 

 the margins, villose-pubescent and rather shorter and narrower than the puberulous 

 petals; stamens with slender filaments villose near the base and green anthers; pistillate 

 flowers unknown. Fruit 4 '-5' long, 1 ' wide, straight, much compressed, rounded and short- 

 pointed at apex, full and rounded at the broad base, thin-walled, dark chestnut-brown, 



