Gleditsia L.

Legumes of the World. Edited by G. Lewis, B. Schrire, B. MacKinder & M. Lock. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. (2005)

Habit

Trees (and 1 sp. a shrub)

Ecology

Temperate and subtropical dry woodland and thicket on sandy and rocky slopes, lowland wet forest and swamp forest

Distribution

2-3 in E North America (of which 1 also recorded from Tamaulipas in Mexico), 1 in S South America (N Argentina and adjacent Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil), 1 (or subsp.) around the Caspian Sea, 1 from NE India, 1 in Malesia (Philippines and Sulawesi [Celebes]), 7-9 in Asia (from E, C and SW China to Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand)

Note

A dioecious genus; placed in the Gleditsia group together with the genus Gymnocladus by Polhill & Vidal (1981) and Polhill (1994), a relationship confirmed by the molecular analyses of Kajita et al. (2001), Bruneau et al. (2001)and the combined molecular-morphological analysis of Herendeen et al. (2003a), (see notes under Gymnocladus); c. 40 extinct Gleditsia or Gleditsia-like spp. have been reported in the fossil literature extending the historical range of the genus into Europe and W North America. The molecular-biogeographical studies of Schnabel & Wendel (1998) and Schnabel et al. (2003) concluded that there is only a single Asian-N American disjunction within the genus, no Asian-American species pairs, and an unusual Asian-S American disjunction

Use

Gleditsia triacanthos L. (honey locust) is widely cultivated as an ornamental, also used in agroforestry (excellent source of animal fodder), for soil reclamation, timber (fence posts, construction and railway ties, the Cherokee Indians of Tennessee allegedly used the wood to make bows), edible fruit pulp (used in folk beers), thorns (as needles and for carding wool, and tied to sticks for hunting bullfrogs); soap (fruits of some species rich in saponins and used as soap substitutes in China, Japan and Indochina), bee forage (honey) and medicine