When you find a tree with flat pods, containing a row of seeds, you may
be sure it is a locust, or one of the family to which locusts belong. It
is a near relative of the peas and beans that grow in the vegetable
garden. This is a great and valuable family to the human race, for it
furnishes some of the most valuable foods upon which the people of all
countries live. Only one family, the grasses, is more important. This
includes not only grasses that are used for making hay, but all the
grains—wheat, barley, rice, oats, and corn, that make the bread of the
world, and forage crops for horses and cattle. The banana and sugar cane
and bamboos are in this wonderful grass family.
Along the roadsides, along rivers, and in the woods grow the black or
yellow locusts that bloom in June, covering their ugly limbs with a
cataract of white, pea-like blossoms, in large clusters. All summer the
slim, thin pods are velvety and green, with a lovely flush of rose, as
they swing among the feathery, fern-like leaves. In autumn the pods turn
brown, and in winter, when the wind can switch them against the bare
twigs, they split, and one by one, the hard little seeds are shaken out.
They are too heavy to be carried in the wind. So we see little locusts
coming up among the old ones, and on the outer edges of the clump.
No tree is so discouraged-looking, unkempt, and diseased as a black
locust infested with the borers, and stripped of the foliage that covered
its thin, irregular limbs in the summer time. The buds, even, are hidden,
and the tree looks as if life had left it. But the late spring denies the
rumour by clothing the dead-looking twigs with foliage whose tender
shadings and delicate leaf forms make it one of the most graceful and
lovely of all native trees.
Unfortunately, we cannot have locusts of this species in this Eastern
country without exposing them to the attacks of insects against which we
cannot defend the trees. The eggs are laid in clefts of the bark, and the
grubs hatch quite out of reach of poisons and other damaging spraying
solutions. They feed on the living substance under the bark, and their
presence is shown by swellings above their burrows. Twigs, limbs, and
trunks are distorted, and gradually the tree loses vitality, and the wood
is made worthless by the honeycombing it receives. Only in the
mountainous parts of its range does the black locust reach its best
growth. No tree has better lumber for posts and other uses requiring
durability in contact with the soil and with water.
The clammy locust is a pink-flowered species with a sticky substance
exuding from the hairy surface of new shoots. The flowers are lovely but
scentless. The trees are much planted in parks and on lawns as an
ornament, in all temperate climates.
The honey locust earns its name in the summer time, when the curving
green pods are full of a sweet, gelatinous pulp. Boys would like to get
these honey pods, but the vicious thorns permit no climbing of the trees.
Stoning and other throwing of missiles is a slow and unsatisfactory means
of obtaining the forbidden fruit that hangs so high. By the time they
ripen and fall off the pods are bitter as gall.
An old-world relative has thick, purple pods, which are sweet and
palatable when ripe. These are brought to this country, and sold on small
fruit stands under the name, St. John’s bread. It is said that this was
the food of John the Baptist in the wilderness.
The Kentucky coffee tree is the coarsest member of the locust family in
our woods. Its pods are thick and short, and the seeds inside are as
large as hazel nuts. In the story of the Revolutionary War, the patriotic
citizens refused to pay duties on imported goods. The seeds of this
locust were used as a substitute for coffee. I have tasted the bitter
outside of one of these nuts, and tried to break one with a hammer, but
unsuccessfully. It is not easy to understand how a beverage made of such
a nut could have been fit to drink. The name of the tree seems to give
colour of truth to the tradition.
A coffee tree much like our native species grows in China. We may believe
that it is called by another name, for the people use its heavy pods for
soap. Whether green or ripe, I do not know.
The club-like branches of our coffee tree give it a burly, clumsy
appearance in winter, when nothing conceals them from view. The dangling
pods rattle against the bare, stubby twigs, calling attention to their
lack of grace and symmetry. Even the buds are out of sight, buried under
the thin bark, just above the big leaf scars. All winter the wind strives
with the stubborn pods. When one is torn off, it lies unopened until
melting snow softens it, and the horny seed lies long before it is able
to sprout.
A thin pod adorns the most delicate of the locust trees. This is the
little red bud, a flat-topped tree, of slender, thornless branches, most
of them horizontal. Early in spring this tree earns its name. Quantities
of rosy magenta, pea-shaped flowers cluster on its slim, angular twigs,
quite covering the smaller branches. It is an unusual colour, and an
unusual time to see pea-blossoms. You cannot forget it, if you have seen
the tree once.
The leaves that soon follow are as unusual as the flowers. Roundish,
heart-shaped, smooth, and shining as if polished, they flutter on thin,
flexible stems, and the slim pods hang among them. They ripen and turn
from green to rich purple when the leaves change to bright yellow. The
hard little seeds are close together in the pods, so that they are
numerous, though the pods are but two or three inches long.
I do not know when the red bud is most charming. Certainly its autumn
garment of yellow is beautiful, trimmed with a fringe of purple pods. It
is a royal robe, and so fresh and new-looking when the foliage of so many
larger trees is faded and in tatters. The trees that hide in the shelter
of larger ones can often save their leaves from wear and tear, and this
the red bud does.
Judas tree is the name by which the red bud of Europe is commonly called.
It is one of a few species to which an ugly tradition has been fastened
by custom. It is said that this is the kind of tree upon which Judas
Iscariot hanged himself. Our little American tree has had to share the
disgrace, for it looks like its European cousin. The name to use is the
true one.
Nurserymen have imported a large-flowered red bud from China. Its flowers
are not only more showy, but they have a paler, prettier colour—a rosy
pink, and lacking the sad, blue tone of the others.
It is easy to raise red bud trees, and they are admirable in the border
planting of a garden or lawn. They begin to blossom when quite young, and
they never grow so large as to be out of place among shrubbery.
The yellow-wood has larger and lovelier blossom clusters than the black
locust, with which it might most easily be confused. In autumn the flower
stems hang full of thin pods, one to three seeds in a pod. No other
locust is so scantily supplied with seeds in a pod.
In summer the leaflets prove that the tree is not a black locust. They
are larger and fewer, though of the same feathered type. In the seasons
when the tree blooms freely, which is by no means every year, the twigs
are loaded with clusters larger than any black locust produces. In winter
it is the bark that distinguishes the tree. It is grey and smooth, like
that of the beech; not at all like the dark trunk and rough limbs of the
locust. The form of the tree is a regular head of horizontally-spreading
limbs, ending in tapering twigs that droop gracefully. It is one of the
handsomest trees in winter. The locust is one of the weediest and ugliest
of trees when bare.
To find the yellow-wood in its native haunts, we must go to the mountains
of Eastern Tennessee and North Carolina. It goes farther north and south,
but its range is scant. Better chance of our meeting it in our
neighbour’s yard. It is cultivated as a flowering tree by people who
appreciate the finest trees that grow wild in American woods. The
nurserymen call it Virgilia. This is certainly a graceful name, fitted to
a tree that deserves only the best.
The catalpas are pod-bearers of a different type. Their long pencils are
green, and there is no sign of splitting until autumn. The seeds are not
like those of the flat pods, set in a single row. They are thin as tissue
paper, and packed in overlapping layers about the thin partition that
divides the pod into two compartments.
The pods hang on after the large, heart-shaped leaves fall. Winter winds
bang them against the twigs, and their two sides separate lengthwise.
Gradually the thin, two-winged seeds escape, and are scattered. The
sowing lasts a long time.
Willows and poplars have pods of a sort, but like neither locusts nor
catalpas. The seeds are very minute in each family, and carried in
delicate wisps of cottony down. The pods open by splitting down their
walls, along two or four lines, curling back the dry segments, and thus
letting the seeds escape. These trees are early in scattering their
seeds. The true pod-bearers are late about it.