YELLOW WOOD. 
77 
PLATE LXXVIIL 
A leaf of half the natural size. A bunch of flowers of the natural size. Fig. 
1, A pod. Fig. 2, A seed. 
[The blossoms, foliage, and the smooth, greenish gray bark of this rare 
tree are all beautiful, and it deserves to be more extensively introduced. 
The wood is so brittle, that in removing specimens the limbs, ifnless care- 
fully handled are liable to break. In the autumn, the beautiful yellow of 
the leaves of the Virgilia is unrivalled by any other tree. There is a very 
noble specimen in the grounds of Mrs. Price, near Germantown, Pa. ; its 
height is 46 feet 8 inches, with a stem measuring 6 feet 7 inches in girth at 
the ground, and over four feet at six inches from the ground. 
Torrey and Gray, to whose work I should more frequently refer if it were 
completed, have named this tree Cladastrus tinctorial] 
SWEET LOCUST. 
Polygamia diœcia. Linn. Leguminosæ. Juss. 
Gleditschia triacanthos. G. ramis spinosis ; spinis crassis ; foliis lineari- 
oblongis ; leguminibus longis, compressis, polyspermis. 
The Sweet Locust belongs peculiarly to the country west of the Allegha- 
ny Mountains, and it is scarcely found in any part of the Atlantic States, 
except in Limestone Valley, and its branches,' which lie between the first 
and second ranges of the Alleghanies, beginning near Harrisburg in Penn- 
sylvania, in the latitude of 40° 42', and extending from north-east to south- 
west into the State of Virginia. The soil in this valley is generally very 
substantial. In the fertile bottoms which are watered by the rivers empty- 
ing into the Mississippi, in the Illinois country, and, still more, in the 
southern part of Kentucky and Tennessee, the Sweet Locust is abundant. 
It commonly grows with the Black Walnut, Shell-bark Hickory, Red Elm, 
Blue Ash, Locust, Box Elder and Coffee Tree, and forms a part of the 
forests that cover the most fertile soils. In different parts of the United 
Vol. II.— 11 
