These things are a Kansas weed! People worry about callery , nothing is worse than these or dulls a chainsaw faster. Can’t compost them , and you sure don’t want the thorns in your foot.
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i have a few b. locusts up at the other orchard. they have thorns but not on the trunk like that. i think you got honey locust.
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We have both black and honey locusts, I think you might be right on that one. They have thornless honey locusts here also.
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Black locust is great for burning, though. Hot, clean, slow burning.
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Yes, these are good for firewood and dulling chainsaws as they are like cutting rock. I’m clearing some space for my next 50 grapes.
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Honey Locust is amazing too. Hottest and long lasting. About the best wood I ever burned. No thorns on honey locusts around here. Some have no seed pods either. Used for landscape trees around here. Planted everywhere.
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I prefer the burning quality of honey locust over black locust personally.
I have grafted some improved varieties of honeylocust.
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I have both here. Neither are “invasive” but they are in most parts of the forest.
I really wanna grow the purple flower black locust, but I’ve never seen it in person.
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i just potted up 12 millwood honey locusts seedlings. these were bred for the edible pods. i grew out 20 hungarian bred b. locusts from seed last year. these are bred for strait timber. dont remember the name. theyre about 18in. now. i need to find somewhere to plant them.
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Has anyone tasted any of the honey locusts bred for edible seed pods? The Hershey trees all look interesting, and there’s definitely plenty of honey locust here to graft onto.
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AdamNY are you in New York? I’m trying to figure out where honey locust are so prevalent at. I think I’m maybe just at the northern end of their range. I don’t see them much where I’m at in Ohio. Anyways I just planted a bunch of seeds in my air pruning bed to eventually plant on my property with improved varieties. It seems that the folks that have them in any real amount really hate them. I hope I’m not making a big mistake haha
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Yeah, I’m in NY where they’re one of the more common street trees, but they pop up everywhere. It’s zone 7 here, but they also grow near my family in Nebraska and northern Iowa (zone 5a), so I’d think they would grow throughout most of Ohio.
I don’t think you’re making a big mistake. Most people who hate them probably have trees with massive thorns, whereas the improved varieties and a lot of commercially available seeds are thornless. I’d definitely be interested in any future updates you might have.
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They grow in Ohio and a lot of the Midwest and east. They don’t seem to grow in clusters but you see one now and then where I am. Sounds like in Kansas there grow rampant. I grubbed the one I found in my field on my property. Didn’t want to deal with the nasty thorns.
I would say any honey locust Gleditsia tricanthos, you plant from seeds will/could have thorns eventually and pods. Thornless varieties will be Gled. tricanthos inermis. Inermis= thornless as the suffix. All the ones in landscapes are budded and are selected thornless varieties, and usally budded onto seedlings which have thorns. Most cultivars are podless by design and selected for that trait. There are about 8-10 common thornless varieties grown commercially.
The seed pods are nasty in a landscape or yard.
They say you can tap them for sap like sugar maples. It’s supposed to give sap that renders down 20:1 where sugar maples are 40:1. Never tried it.
Black locust are numerous and tend to grow in groves or clusters with a much smaller thorn and no thorns on the trunks. They make good fence post.
We grew black locust that had red/purple flowers and was thornless. It was called Purple Robe. Saw a couple blooming about 3 weeks ago and they were pretty.
Keep us posted on the edible pods.
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The honey locust seem to only become rampant here where cows are there to spread them by eating the pods, and they’ll usually kill any thornless tree that comes up by grubbing it.
The thornless honeylocust, there are basically only two types the ones that have no thorns whatsoever at any stage of maturity. And the ones that are partially/semi thornless in that the mature fruiting wood doesn’t have thorns and anything grafted with the mature wood won’t have the thorns. If I am understanding the genetics correctly, the full thornless have both alleles as thornless and the thornless when mature have just one thornless one.
The flowering is kind of like persimmons in that you have male trees and female trees, but unlike persimmons a much higher percent have both male and female flowers.
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I bought thornless seeds, but I think they can still produce some trees that have thorns, so I’ll cull those as soon as I can tell. I heard on a podcast that one of the main varieties can have thorns I forget if it was Calhoun or another one. Anyways if I had a bunch of Calhoun and it does have some thorns I would assume the wild seedlings have a chance of being thorny.
I’m going to grown them out this year, plant them in they’re permanent spot in 2027 and then hopefully graft in 28. Unless they really put on size their first year. I’m not sure what to expect.
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I live in Michigan, Grand Rapids area and the Honey Locust are VERY common for commercial landscaping. Most of them do not get the seed pods. Occasionally you will find one with seed pods, but even then I dont see many volunteers popping up.
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At one time farmers would collect the pods and use them for cattle feed. For the best nutrition uptake, the pods need to go through some type of grinder or hammer mill to crush the seeds to release the minerals and proteins from them.
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Honeylocust does not grow here naturally. And Black Locust seems to avoid Georgia to. American Hornbeam , Hickory, Hophornbeam and Live Oak are our hard ole woods
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I’m successfully growing a few dozen Hershey variety in z5a (Washington Co. NY). I grow them from seed and they’re about 50/50 thorn/thornless. I plant the thorned ones on my tree farm in NY bc of the deer infestation. And keep the thornless at my home orchard (Z7a, PA).
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