174 THE TREE BOOK 



well be imagined. The flowers unfold in great 

 fragrant pea-like racemes, often a foot in length, 

 and of the purest white. Lounsberry tells us 

 that: "When the sun shines upon them after a 

 shower, they sparkle as with iimumerable drops 

 of crystallized dew, and tiny, round specks of 

 reflected sunshine gleam over their white petals. 

 . . . Sometimes they blend crimson, yellow, and 

 green. The crimson tint is bordered with gray, 

 and the green sinks into a deeper blue." The 

 wood of this tree is light yellow and so brittle 

 that the branches often break in a high wind. 

 The pods are thin and flat, containing from four 

 to six seeds. 



The Kentucky coffee tree is an interesting 

 pod-bearer. It is so coarse and burly that, 

 notwithstanding its height of from forty to one 

 hundred and ten feet, it is often called the stump 

 tree. Its branches are stout and stiff, and in 

 winter the clumsy twigs are fairly weighed 

 down with their load of broad, flat, reddish pods. 

 The seeds are hard and gray. The Kentucky 

 pioneers used them as a substitute for coffee. 

 Let us examine the twice-compound leaves. 

 They are coarse and unusually large, often 

 measuring three feet in length. There are from 

 seven to thirteen taper-pointed leaflets on each 

 division of the blade. They are rounded at the 



