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Pod-bearers — Part 2

As an ornamental tree, the chief drawback of the locust is its unsightliness when bare of leaves. The fact should he added that the leaves come late and fall early. The tree sends up suckers freely from the roots, which unfits it for planting on lawns. There are sixteen varieties of this tree known in cultivation. With all its faults they love it still; the American people plant locusts for the borers to distort.

The prickles that arm these trees are not thorns at all. They are but skin deep, like prickles of rose and gooseberry bushes. But they persist and become quite formidable. They are merely stipules of the leaves. Each pair of leaflets has a pair of tiny spines guarding the base. But they are transient, falling with the leaf. Thornless trees often occur in groves of locusts.

The Clammy Locust (Robinia viscosa, Vent.) is a little, rough-barked tree that grows wild in the mountains of North Carolina. It is a favourite garden ornament, for it has delicate feathery foliage and the shaded pinks of its close flower cluster make a combination of form and colour no artist can resist. The calyxes are dark red, and all the new growth shines with the sticky substance that exudes from the covering of glandular hairs, and gives the tree its name. The spines are inconspicuous.

The New Mexican Locust (Robinia Neo-Mexicana, Gray) rarely rises higher than a shrub in the Southwestern semi-desert regions. Its tender shoots are covered with glandular but not viscid hairs. The flowers are rosy and handsome. The twigs are armed with short, stout, recurved spines.

The Bristly Locust (Robinia hispida, Linn.), a garden shrub with large crimson flowers and bristly hairs covering its shoots, is probably the most common locust in cultivation.