e-Key v<span id="jodit_selection_marker_1699522317144_9757660742871399" data-jodit_selection_marker="start" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>3 - *Gled<span id="jodit_selection_marker_1699522317144_40999399326317265" data-jodit_selection_marker="end" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>itsia
SANBI Flora Keys Logo
Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.

Fabaceae - Caesalpinioideae - Caesalpinieae - *Gleditsia L.

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

References:

  • BALL, P.W. 1968. Leguminosae. Flora europaea 2
  • HUTCHINSON, J. 1964. Order LEGUMINALES. The genera of flowering plants 1. Oxford University Press, Oxford
  • LINNAEUS, C. 1753. Species plantarum, edn 1. Laurentius Salvius, Stockholm