Gleditsia
Content
Description
Trees, trunks and branches armed with simple or branched thorns.
Leaves pinnate and/or bipinnate.
Stipules minute, caducous.
Inflorescences axillary, racemose, solitary or fasciculate, rarely paniculate; bracts and bracteoles absent at anthesis; pedicels articulate.
Flowers perfect or imperfect, unisexual or bisexual, the plants dioecious or polygamous.
Petals 3-5, subequal, imbricate, not clawed.
Stamens 5-10, exserted in male and bisexual flowers, reduced in female; filaments free, more or less equal; anthers longitudinally dehiscent.
Ovary subsessile in female or bisexual flowers, rudimentary or absent in male, 2-30-ovuled; style short; stigma terminal, often 2-lobed.
Seeds transverse, broadly ellipsoid to subquadrate, compressed, albuminous.
Distribution
Asia-Temperate: Korea present, Asia-Tropical: India present; Laos (Laos present); Philippines (Philippines present); Sulawesi (Sulawesi present); Vietnam (Vietnam present), Caspian Sea present, Eastern North America present, Japan present, Southern America
About 14 species, 2 or 3 in eastern North America, 1 in southern South America, c. 1 around the Caspian Sea, 1 in Malesia (Philippines and Celebes), the rest in India, Laos, Vietnam, China, Korea, and Japan..