Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, volume 1.djvu/254

226 Male in the second year. Plate XLII. Fig 4.

Irregularly spotted with black, yellow, and reddish orange, on the head, neck, and back; the other parts nearly as in the adult male.

, Willd. Sp. P. vol. iv. p. 1097. Pursh, Flor. Amer. vol. i. p. 221. Mich. Arbr. Forest. vol. iii. p. 164. Pl. 10.—, Linn., Juss.

This tree, when growing in situations most favourable to it, sometimes attains a height of sixty or eighty feet, and a diameter of three or four. The bark is detached in large plates, and the trunk is marked with several broad furrows. The flowers, which are small and of a greenish colour, are succeeded by long, flat, pendent, generally tortuous pods, of a brown colour. The wood is very hard, but porous and brittle. This species is distinguished by its numerous, generally tripartite spines, its linear-oblong leaflets, and its many-seeded, compressed legumes.