Description :

• Trees or shrubs, usually armed with stout straight or branched thorns
• Leaves stipellate or not, usually all or partly bipinnate on long shoots, pinnate or bipinnate on short shoots; leaflets often ± serrate
• Flowers small, greenish, effectively unisexual or plants polygamous with flowers in racemes or small panicles; bracteoles small or 0
• Calyx campanulate with 3-5 lobes, subequal
• Petals 3-5, sessile, slightly unequal, imbricate
• Stamens 6-10; anthers uniform
• Ovary in male flowers rudimentary, minute or 0, in bisexual flowers subsessile, free; ovules many to 2; style short; stigma terminal
• Pod ovate or elongated, straight, compressed, coriaceous, indehiscent or tardily dehiscent, often pulpy within
• Seeds many, transverse, obovate or orbicular, compressed
• x = 14 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Gleditsia L.
  • Linnaeus: 1056 (1753)
  • Hutchinson: 266 (1964)
  • Ball: 84 (1968)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : * Gleditsia triacanthos L., Honey or Sweet Locust, strongly spiny trees, cultivated and may be found as an escape