The Pod-bearers 



bers of a family which boasts many graceful trees. The pulp 

 in the heavy pod is used in China for soap. Our tree is planted 

 for shade on city streets, and for the sake of its peculiar, great 

 pods, which hang on the bare limbs all winter. The characters 

 of the genus are embodied in the native species. 



Kentucky CofTee Tree (Gymnocladus dioicus, K. Koch.) — 

 A narrow, round-topped tree with tall trunk, 75 to loo feet high, 

 with stout, thornless twigs. Bark grey, deeply furrowed; ridges 

 scaly. JVood light brown, soft, heavy, coarse, strong, durable. 

 Buds scaly, half hidden in the twig. Leaves twice pinnate, i to 

 3 feet long, i to 2 feet broad, of 40 to 60 oval leaflets, dark green, 

 smooth; petioles stout, long, enlarged at base; autumn colour, 

 clear yellow. Flowers, June, dioecious, regular, greenish white, 

 in racemes staminate, 3 to 4 inches long; pistillate 10 to 12 

 inches long, somewhat hairy. Fruit a thick-walled, purple pod, 

 6 to 10 inches long, 2 inches wide, dark red, short stalked; seeds 

 several, bony, globular, ^ inch in diameter, in sweetish, sticky 

 pulp, bitter at maturity. Preferred habitat, rich, moist soil. 

 Distribution, New York to Minnesota and Nebraska; south to 

 Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Arkansas and Indian Territory. Uses: 

 A good street and shade tree. Wood used for fencing, in con- 

 struction and rarely in cabinet work. 



The Kentucky coffee tree is one of the rarest of American 

 forest trees. It ranges widely, but is nowhere common. It is 

 remarkable for its dead-looking frame, which holds aloft its stiff, 

 bare twigs in spring after other trees are clothed with new leaves. 

 But at length the buds open and the leaves appear, twice com- 

 pound, and often 3 feet long. The basal leaflets are bronze 

 green while the tips are still pink from having just unfolded. 

 This stately tree, its trunk topped with a close pyramid of these 

 wonderful leaves, is a sight to remember. Often the trunk is 

 free from limbs for 50 feet or more. 



The flowers of the coffee tree are greenish purple and incon- 

 spicuous, borne in erect racemes or loose panicles on separate 

 trees. The pistillate trees are burdened with their clumsy pods 

 in the autumn. They are so heavy as to inflict a painful bruise 

 if they strike a person in falling. The pioneers of Kentucky 

 made out of the seeds a beverage to take the place of coffee. We 

 may well wonder how they ever ground these adamantine beans, 

 and how they ever drank a beverage as bitter as it must have been. 



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