LEGUMINOS^E 



555 



remaining unopened on the branches throughout the winter; seeds separated by a 

 thick layer of dark-colored sweet pulp, f ' long. 



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 nar- 

 row round-topped head, or occasionally sending up a tall straight shaft destitute 

 of branches for 70-80, and branchlets coated at first with short dense pubescence 

 faintly tinged with red, and bearing at their base the conspicuous orange-green obo- 

 vate pubescent bud-scales 1' long at maturity, ^'-^' 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 sapwood 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 New York and western Pennsyl- 

 vania, through southern Ontario and southern Michigan to the valley of the Minnesota 

 River, and to eastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, southwestern Arkansas, the Indian 

 Territory, 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 ends and prolonged by axillary buds, thick fibrous roots, the trunk and branches 

 often armed with stout simple or branched spines or abortive branches 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 fasci- 

 cled in earlier axils, abruptly pinnate or bipinnate, the pinnze increasing in length 



