fight for your honey locust

how about a competition? best information gets a free honey locust seedling. actually, let's just say every post earns a honey locust seedling*.

Gleditsia triacanthos:
what's it good for?
what isn't it good for?
who can eat what parts and are they nutritious?
how does one propagate it?
access to thorn-less varieties?
largest thorn you've ever seen?
hardiness?
does it actually fix nitrogen and how much?
dense stand or savanna?
any potential for browse?
anything else I didn't think of.

GO.

*limit 20 and pick up your prizes in person.

If it's the same as the kind we have in Kansas the only good I know of is to make more work for me to eradicate it from the property.

Seriously, though, I have heard of it being used to make gun stocks. Supposed to be quite beautiful. And it makes excellent fire wood. Puts off a lot of heat. The longest thorns I have seen were close to six inches but I have seen some thornless trees on the property. They spread by seed and by runners from the tree. Runners travel quite far until another tree pops out of the ground. One tree can very soon have a dense stand around it. It survives our winters quite nicely--zone 5/6. Goats and sheep will eat small trees and leaves they can reach and it seems to draw bees in the early summer. Don't know about the nitrogen fixing. My main complaint with them is the sharp thorn and spreading into areas I don't want them. Please donate my seedling--if earned--to the charity of your choice. As long as it's far from here.

this reminds me of my parents old home where i grew up..there was a honey locust growing there..and every year we would try to dig up and transplant the babies..and they would always die..i never did manage to get any of them to grow out here..

not sure what i was doing wrong..i always loved them..

as far as what is edible about them..i'm not really certain but i'm sure there were..i have heard that they are good for animal feed but thing they have some other beneifts too.

i do know they are good for erosion control as they send out runners..similar to our aspen trees..one mama tree and tons and tons of babies.

that would also make them a good nurse tree...as they would "settle" an an area an provide food an shelter for hardwood seedlings.

i have heard of thornless varities..which would likely be really cool..and i am aware that they are greatr for wildlife..

i know they are hardy as far north as where we live zone 4/5
and that they form thickets or large family groups..they have really purty flowers..

guess i'm not much help not havinig successfully grown them here

well, this isn't going well. I'll try to get us started again.

from pfaf:

Seed - raw or cooked. It can contain up to 30% sugar. Young seeds taste like raw peas. Seeds are not always borne in maritime regions because the tree prefers long hot summers. The oval seeds are about 8mm long. They contain 10.6 - 24.1% protein, 0.8 - 4.3% fat, 84.7% carbohydrate, 21.1% fibre, 4% ash, 280mg calcium and 320mg phosphorus per 100g. The seeds have been roasted and used as a coffee substitute. Seedpods - the pulp is sweet and can be eaten raw or made into sugar. The tender young seedpods can be cooked and eaten. The pulp in older pods turns bitter. The seedpods are up to 40cm long and 4cm wide. A sweet, pleasant tasting drink can be made from the seed pods. The seed pulp has been used to make a drink.

I'm told that the wood is very rot-resistant, but prone to splitting. suggests to me that it would make very good split rail fences.

I've also read that honey locust thorns have been used as nails.

a google search turns up all sorts of studies using honey locust as an intercrop and in alley cropping strategies.

here is a good summary of the info J. Russell Smith published in Tree Crops. a couple highlights recommending it for forage: the open canopy allows pasture to grow under it and the thorns protect the trunk from rubbing and chewing.

goodshephrd's objections are certainly valid, but it seems they could be nullified if browsing and grazing animals were part of the equation. what do you think?

Absolutely the grazing helps. The ones I was cutting out were too big for the animals. I don't know if the grazing would kill the young tree or not. Maybe. I think runners draw a lot of nutrients from the main tree. Didn't know they used the thorns for nails. I wonder if the Indians used them for an arrowhead?

Honey locust was the fencepost of choice where I grew up. I am in Maine now and the cedar is what everyone uses. I see grove of honey locusts here near old farmsteads, so somebody knew what they were for.

I grew up with Honey Locusts, they were all over the place at the old farmhouse where I grew up. The biggest grave surrounded where the old cow barn used to be. I am not sure if they were used because the can't be rubbed because of the thorns or because of the pods for the cattle to eat. The pods make good fodder and Native Americans used to eat the meat around the beans and use the pods to make a beer like drink.

I have never tried transplanting them but my experience is that you can't get rid of them. They reproduce by the pods obviously but also by suckers and if you cut one down it will sprout up form the trunk and you have to dig up the trunk if you really want to get rid of them.

I know there are thorn-less varieties that are ornamental but I have no experience with them only "wild" specimens. I have seen thorns of 5 or 6 inches or 12 to eighteen inches if you strip off the the branching thorns from a thorn cluster. The thorns break when stepped on and we never got any in our feet from them penetrating our shoe soles. However they are murder on wheelbarrow tires.

They seem extremely hardy and can grow almost anywhere, but in Ohio we get a lot of rainfall so in my experience hardiness means different types of slopes, solar exposure, soil and the ability to win out in "survival of the fittest" in the thickets of Ohio.

They grow in pretty dense stands but the leaves are pretty small so you get decent sun to everything below them and support dense ground cover including shrubs and small trees. Actually raspberries and blackberries seem to do very well under them so I assume beans and squash and other plants that like mottled exposure would do well too.

I have heard mixed things when it comes to nitrogen fixing but they do seem to improve the soil overtime and retain topsoil extremely well. I have also read that they do well as inter-crops with apples or other fruit trees but don't know why. If anybody has more scientific explanations for why to inter-crop them and use them in guilds with fruit trees I would like to know.

Hope this helps

great information..thanks

Hidden Springs Nursery has some cultivars that were selected back in the day for mass pod production.

I feed the pods to the goats in the fall, but the seeds just pass through them cuz don't go through effort of grinding them. so little seedlings try to pop up everywhere, but goats take care of that problem, too. The tree is being mass planted in cities, and leaving the species vulnerable to attack. So I plant some, but don't go overboard, knowing something probably could wipe them out if in too dense of stands.

My dairy goats LOVE honey locust. They will do most anything to get to it, fresh or dried. They like it so much I dry some (stripping off the leaves by hand) for them for winter treats. Being a legume, I'm sure it is high in protein. It always seems to come up in the wrong places though and we end up having to cut it down. Makes great firewood too, one of the best. Of coure, we save out anything we can use for pole barns first.

Here is a cut/paste from J.L.Hudson, Seedsman (CopyLeft)

GLEDITSIA (gle-DIT-shee-a)

LEGUMINOSAE. 'HONEY LOCUST'. Handsome ornamental trees grown throughout the world.
Vigorous, hardy, fast growing, drought resistant, standing almost any soil except heavy clay.
They are excellent for shade, impenetrable hedges, timber & fuelwood production,
erosion control, human, livestock and wildlife food, shelterbelts, etc.
Tolerates alkalinity and salinity. Easy from seed, but has a hard seed coat.
Either nick and soak, or cover with 3 - 4 times their volume with almost boiling water
and soak till swollen. Sow shallowly to germinate in 1 - 4 weeks warm.

THORNLESS HONEYLOCUST'.
Thornlessness is a genetically dominant trait and comes true from seed.
Other than lack of thorns, this tree has all of the fine properties of the thorny kind.

His catalog currently lists the thornless as OUT OF STOCK

He has a customer write that over half of his seedlings survived a winter of -40 F (= -40 C)

what's it good for?
Larger pods + higher sugar content => More economical beer production!

Honey Locust--I munched on a pod or two as a child (the pods are slightly diuretic so beware). An old time name for them is "Confederate Pin Tree" so called because the Confederates used to pin up their uniforms with the thorns due to lack of iron or steel pins. They are sometimes planted for mining reclamation. In dry country they make a passable fodder for browsers. In Eastern Europe and South Korea they are coppiced extensively. Their low specific gravity is not quite what one would call a "hard wood" but perhaps they can be said to be among the softest of the hardwoods or hardest of the soft woods. Prone to splitting while drying so not really a gunstock or fine furniture type wood. Good fencepost wood and small odd branches make excellent sweet smelling fireplace wood. I like the sharp spines, wish I knew of a use for them...well, I say a very "permaculturish" thing to do with them is to plant them one foot apart in an exact circle and grow an African style "Boma" to keep your herd animals in and coyotes and other predators out. If you have goats or deer, they will browse the leaves..so they could be used simulatanously as protection and livestock food...Mike

honey locust is one of the preferred woods for growing maitake/hen-of-the-woods. that's a seriously delicious mushroom. seriously.

That's good to know about Maitakes, I've only been using oak...

Re: nitrogen fixation

research by Dr. Jim Bryan at the School of Forestry at Yale University found evidence of bacterial nitrogen fixation in the roots of non-nodulating Leguminosae. These results, now expanded and reported in the refereed journal, Plant and Soil, included tests with Gleditsia triacanthos L. and twelve other non-nodulating species under different growing conditions--potting soil, sand, and bare root. Subsequent to the publication of this article, additional tests by Bryan using Gleditsia triacanthos L. have further confirmed the earlier findings.

Found this here in newsletter #3 http://faculty.virginia.edu/honeylocust-agroforestry/agroforestry/

The original research is from '95, seems like something should have happened since then, can't find anything more recent, though.

I'm planning on using them along with thorny brambles to protect fruit plantings from deer in a low maintenance food forest.

peace

We eat the spring flowers of our locusts.
They are fragrant, slightly sweet. They are good by the handful in salads, can be cooked lightly, but we mostly just snack on them. They taste way better fresh and early in their bloom.

My mom raises bees and always looks forward to the honey from when the bees go for the honey locusts. Super fragrant and delicious.

Paul and Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia's Garden share about honey locust, including an anecdote of Bill Mollison, in this podcast: http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/367-podcast-053-toby-hemenway-native-plants/

Suzy Bean wrote:an anecdote of Bill Mollison

I am curious what Geoff Lawton would say about the likely effect of Honey locust on soil nitrogen enrichment that is not by nitrogen fixing of rhizobial nodules but by another possible association with another non-nodule forming diazatrophic bacterium—Bill Mollison had his reasons to plant hordes of Hony locust.

Tel, it's a good thing you said we had to come pick up our "prizes", or else I'd be afraid you'd make good on your threat to give us a honey locust seedling. I don't have room on my third-acre lot for things that spread easily and are hard to kill.

I love my honey locust, but only because it is a well-behaved "Sunburst" variety which has no thorns or flowers. What is does have is leaves that are a beautiful yellow when young. I love the light shade it gives, as do the yellow loosestrife, yucca, and groundcover sedum I have around it. My earliest blackberries thrive nearby, but I suspect those are more influenced by the "accidental hugelkultur" of the rotted tree stump they are growing on top of.

The only two good things in my life that came from honey locust trees are

1. They make EXCELLENT firewood and kindling. If they don't tear up you or your saw in the process! The branches in the box are dry honey locust that I gathered last year for starting fires in our wood stove.

2. After the second time I got one embedded in the bottom of my foot (thorns pierced the soles of my boots), I went out and bought my first pair of Red Wings--hard-bottomed and steel-toed. Love those boots.

Other than that, we are striving to eliminate them from our acres. They are a significant hazard to humans and to tires, as well as being a large potential legal liability if someone gets hurt. The thorns can remain dangerous hiding on the ground for years even after the tree is gone. We have just one large mature honey locust (that I know of) left to deal with, and I am not sure how we are going to bring it down without hurting anyone.

We went to the local Walmart parking lot and harvested several hundred seeds off the ground in their pods. We used a file to get through the hull of the seed and planted them. We had a 99% sprouting rate and a 25% survival rate over winter #1, but we have brown thumbs. We are still waiting for them to thaw out this year to see if there are any survivors.

Black Locust vs. Honey Locust: Which one is more useful?

Good info thus far. I've always been mildly interested in them from a security standpoint (the George Washington quote in this or the other thread, can't remember which).

There are some specimens here locally in my area that are literally a solid knot of thorns up the entire trunk, never seen anything like them. A hedge planted out of those things would keep anything in (or out).

Yone' Ward wrote:
Black Locust vs. Honey Locust: Which one is more useful?

Black v. Honey Locust

About 30% of our woods (overgrown pasture) is Honey Locust. I found 28 of the straightest ones and used them for poles in my house. They do have some radial splitting, but after 5 years, they seem to be holding up okay. I have one pole that gets down to about 5 inches at the top, and it split to the point I put a metal collar around it (yikes!).

When I was a child I got a 3" splinter in my cheek while sledding near some honey locusts, so have always hate a hate/hate relationship with them. But now, with all I've learned about them, they will have a permanent place in my developing food forest.

-Jonathan

@Jonathan Overlin

Hey, that style construction looks vaguely familiar, is it inspired by Japanese pole construction? Very nice by the way, completely envious!

tel jetson wrote:well, this isn't going well. I'll try to get us started again.

from pfaf:

Seed - raw or cooked. It can contain up to 30% sugar. Young seeds taste like raw peas. Seeds are not always borne in maritime regions because the tree prefers long hot summers. The oval seeds are about 8mm long. They contain 10.6 - 24.1% protein, 0.8 - 4.3% fat, 84.7% carbohydrate, 21.1% fibre, 4% ash, 280mg calcium and 320mg phosphorus per 100g. The seeds have been roasted and used as a coffee substitute.(THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR COFFIE) Seedpods - the pulp is sweet and can be eaten raw or made into sugar. The tender young seedpods can be cooked and eaten. The pulp in older pods turns bitter. The seedpods are up to 40cm long and 4cm wide. A sweet, pleasant tasting drink can be made from the seed pods. The seed pulp has been used to make a drink.

I'm told that the wood is very rot-resistant, but prone to splitting. suggests to me that it would make very good split rail fences.

I've also read that honey locust thorns have been used as nails.

a google search turns up all sorts of studies using honey locust as an intercrop and in alley cropping strategies.

here is a good summary of the info J. Russell Smith published in Tree Crops. a couple highlights recommending it for forage: the open canopy allows pasture to grow under it and the thorns protect the trunk from rubbing and chewing.

goodshephrd's objections are certainly valid, but it seems they could be nullified if browsing and grazing animals were part of the equation. what do you think?