392 
DECIDUOUS TREES. 
but its habit of growth is so straggling and tortuous that it needs 
much care to keep it in a form suitable in polished grounds. It is 
recommended to have a single stem tied to a strong cedar post six 
or eight feet high (which should be permanent), with a wire parasol- 
like frame fixed to the top to support the branches and allow them 
to fall on all sides from it. Thus trained there is no more exquisite 
flowering-shrub. The post alone will, if care is taken to keep the 
stem tied to it so as not to injure the bark, be sufficient to keep 
the tree in good shape. 
The Three-thorned Acacia or Honey Locust. Gleditschia. 
— A large and curious native of our forests, armed at all points with 
enormous compound thorns which grow even through the old bark 
of the trunk as well as on the branches, and arm all parts of the 
tree in the most formidable manner. Downing gives the tree high 
rank for ornamental purposes. We have seen much of it, in favor- 
able circumstances, and although it exceeds the Robinias in the 
flaky lightness of its foliage, and in picturesqueness of outline, it 
is inferior to them in every other respect, and is a desirable tree 
only for the merits just named, which make it suitable as a pictur- 
esque condiment among trees of heavy outlines. Like the beech, 
though its branches form angles of about 45° with the main stem 
when the tree is young, the exterior foliage is disposed in horizontal 
strata, recalling by their appearance pictures of old cedars of 
Lebanon. Old trees especially, with their tabular tops, are re- 
markable for this appearance. The thorns of the honey locust 
which occasionally die out and drop off, are dangerous, as they lie 
concealed in the grass, to the feet of those who walk under them ; 
and this fact is an objection to the tree where there are children. 
In blossom the tree is less showy than the common locusts. The 
seed pods which succeed the blossoms are from five to nine inches 
long \ and though the seeds ripen early in autumn, the pods them- 
selves remain dry and hard upon the tree through the winter, and 
sometimes for more than a year, and are unsightly. 
There are some Chinese species or varieties, G. sinensis., whose 
characteristics are not sufficiently known to describe. Loudon 
mentions the G. s. purpurea as “ a small tree of compact upright 
