THE KENTUCKY COFFEE TREE.
Gymuocladus dioicus, K. Koch The Kentucky coffee tree is the one clumsy, coarse mem ber of a family that abounds in graceful, dainty species. Its head is small and unsymmetrical, above a trunk that often rises free from limbs for fifty feet above ground. The branches are stiff and large, bare until late spring, when the buds expand and the shoots are thrown out. The leaves are twice compound, often a yard in length and half as wide; the leaflets, six to fourteen on each of the five to nine divisions of the main rib. No other locust can boast a leaf numbering more than one hundred leaflets, each averaging two inches in length. When the tree turns to gold in autumn, it is a sight to draw all eyes.
The flower spray is large, but the flowers are small, im perfect, salver-form, purplish green—the fertile ones form ing thick, clumsy pods that dangle in clusters, and seem to weigh down the stiff branchlets. The fresh pulp used to be
made into a decoction used in homeopathic practice. The ripe seeds were used in Revolutionary times as a substitute for coffee. How the pioneer ever crushed them is a puzzle to all who have tried to break one with a nut cracker. In China the fresh pulp of the pods of a sister species is used as we use soap.
The wood is not hard, but in other respects it resembles other locust lumber. It is sometimes used in cabinet work, being a rich, reddish brown, with pale sapwood.
The range of the coffee tree extends from New York to Nebraska, and south through Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Oklahoma, with bottom lands as the tree's preference. Nowhere is this species common. Occasionally, it is planted as a street tree, in this country and abroad.