In my opinion, the black locust should replace PT wood on every outdoor project: No nasty chemicals and extreme rot resistance. When it's done, you can safely burn it (with a lot of BTUs and no VOCs). The figure can be very attractive as well. It grows like Bamboo, ad infitum. What rock have you been under?
Exactly, black locust should never be considered undesirable it’s a very valuable wood that can be used for many things! If you have to many cut them down and use the wood.
Very valuable tree but not for the lazy person. Suckers need to be managed and if you introduce one that spreads into your neighbor's yard they might not take too kindly.
How would it take for both locust tree species to help in reforestation on bare land?????? And how many acres to plant for family firewood woodland plots?????
@@georgecarlin2656 I keep reading these are poisonous, even honey from bees that only collect from black locust is poisonous. I'd like to know how that turned out.
I guess I have a differing opinion. Here in northern California I have a microclimate that is hot and dry and very rarely falls below freezing. It's very hard to grow anything and the cost to pump the water from a 800 foot deep well is expensive. Even drought tolerant plants don't seem to survive very well. I planted a purple robe locust in the front yard of my home. It appears the tree was grafted onto a black locust root system. Every year suckers come up and I cut or mow the ones that I don't want. They take very little water, grow fast and are providing me with much-needed shade from the hot sun. Yes they do have spines but it's a small price to pay for the shade that I have received.
I finally got information about my black locust. I have been calling it Purple Robe Black Locust. Love this tree. Southern Colorado desert area it has survived where 97% of all my other trees and plants didn’t in the past 18 years.
I grew up in a house in northeast Kansas that had an ancient honey locust in the back yard. It attracted an incredible amount of wildlife, which was why my parents kept it, but I can still remember those thorns going right through the soles of shoes. Yowzers!
You forgot to mention that Black locust wood fluoresces under UV. It does this for quite a while after it's cut, but it does fade over time. I've done my decks in Black Locust. You have to pre-drill and countersink EVERY hole, but you can't ask for a prettier, more durable wood. Particularly since you can find it at or less than the price of pressure treated.
Growing up these trees were grown and used in multiple ways. Grandpa had some between the creek and the pond, but we had to keep them pruned back or they took over. Others were grown up in the woods. The tress in the clearing bushed out like a regular tree, but the ones up the hill grew tall in between the other trees. These were the ones we periodically harvested for fence posts and pole structures. If we stripped the bark off while green and let them dry, they could stay in the ground for 30 years. Might want extra chains and sharpening tools though when cutting. This is a dense wood.
We have about two dozen black locust trees here on our Ohio property. My biggest gripe with them is that, while the heartwood may be tough, the branches are extremely brittle and are ALWAYS coming down. I wish whoever started them had opted for red maples instead.
It is two different trees, the black locust and the honey locust. I'm attaching some links where you can find locust tree seeds, and information for growing the tree from the seeds. www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Locust+Tree+Seeds Tips for growing: forestry.usu.edu/files/uploads/growatreefromseed.pdf
They poke holes in tires and grow faster than you can keep up with them. They have taken over about an acre of my pasture and If you cut one ten grow from the stump. I wish I could figure how to kill them.
cut to stump, drill hole into stump, pour Tardon down hole. you're welcome. however, side note, honey locusts can be used as an alternative to maple syrup from the sap, and the bean pods contain more sugar then sugar cane.
interesting fact, the honey locust bean pods contain 29 percent sugar, which is higher then sugar cane. and the sap can be used as an alternative to maple syrup. they also produce very tought lumber, so now i'm plannign to tap several trunks on my land, however not all of them will live as several smaller trees are in undesirable areas..
@@michaelvoorhees5978 Well unfortunately, my land is an hour away, and between covid and inflation getting up there to mow around the apple trees and peach tree and the associated cost has hindered any progress.
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Use a weed burner on those suckers. Its way easier that trying to chop them out. So what if you have to do it once and a while. The burner screws into a propane bottle. You have to start it with a striker. Its easy and fun. Way better than trying to chop them out. About 50 bucks. It will last you forever. Except for the gas. Ye ha hey ho you yea go.
Not a single word about why the honey locust seed might be sweet... You did a video featuring honey locust and didn't discuss why the tree produces such thorns... Why did you even bother?
Thank you very much for your video on this tree. The thorns are really scary! Thank you for raising awareness of these huge thorns. Very good presentation. I learned a lot! Good luck on all your work!
I think I'm like native American or something but indigenous like 12k year old tribe.. anyways our settlements are covered in these and they are edible, you just take the seeds like pills especially the honey locust, but also gymnocladus dioecious... Basically the same thing as psilocybin mushrooms... and they're fuckin indestructible lol... You can eat the leaves of honeysuckle first before eating the leaves of honey locust and that's basically ayahuasca. Racists always try and kill them but we have these elders that aren't human and they always hunt the people down. I'm like the same basic tribe as them, they still just live in the edge of the settlement... skinwalkers. I'm not technically human either, I have adopted parents who don't understand me, but the skinwalkers basically raised me. Obviously the trees aren't bad or poison.
Concentrate on the bark when identifying trees. Too many arborists and tree enthusiasts look at leaves. The bark is a dead giveaway when studied well. Locust is an extremely hot coal. Locust will make a stove glow red. The black locust oil is an irritant to skin. Black locust posts last for decades. Honey locust makes a good protective boarder to thwart human activity. Intentional cultivation for heating produces great btu for a relatively fast growing dense wood.
I have bees and have in fact planted both species. I also have a seedling of a black locust cultivar that is said to produce more honey than the typical one. It's call Pusztavaks, or something like that.
Thank you for this. We have a black locust in the grass verge outside our house in a small town in England. It upearths the footpath (sidewalk) and the thorns in the ground-level shoots are right by where people push their baby buggies, unaware of the thorns lurking within. Very invasive and putting shoots up all over our small garden where our grandchildren play. I'm all for planting as many trees as possible but in the right place!
I just found Black Locust sprouting randomly in Lithuania, Europe. I guess some birds might've carried some seeds here, so I'm gonna try growing one as they grow pretty fast and we need some shade. Tho we have quite a few apple trees, they look very plain and "boring" so to say.
The black locusts in my yard here in South Eastern Michigan USA have been about the best trees to grow in a large south east Michigan yard, but I have seen them thriving hundreds of miles from here so they must do well in other areas as well. I have bout two acres and here are the positives about these trees: These trees grow fast and spread as noted so if you have a semi wild area they can populate the area themselves which is nice because they trees look so majestic once they reach 80-90 and 100 feet which mine have reached and even taller. They can and do get tall and have a slender look because branches tend to form toward the tops of the trees allowing them to sway majestically in the wind. Beautiful to watch as a thunderstorm is rolling in! The bark is rough and deep which looks great! If you surround one with lawn that is fine too because you do something called mow the lawn, so any additional trees that spring up are mowed over! The thorns are not a bother to any one that i have noted unless you have some crazy desire to climb one in your bare hands which is difficult for the older trees as there are few if any lower branches! The thorns will keep the deer away however so, if you want your young trees to be eaten by deer (which are plentiful around my area of Michigan) then do not plant these! (Yes deer can decimate your young fruit trees and kick over your tomatoes and eat the flowers to the ground if you have never enjoyed having these animals on your land) Actually i enjoyed the video but I actually prefer these majestic looking trees instead of considering them to be undesirable.. And yes the wood is tough so if you have a stump from one it will still be there ten years later....However an added benefit is that if your black locust is in an excellent location (like a few of mine are near the top of my drive), but it is dying but not yet dead--you can cut it down and about half the time a brand new black locust will spring up right next to or from the stump and grow like a weed to replace it. With the tall majestic beauty, excellent wood for building or the fireplace, deer resistance, fast growing they seem a desirable tree for many folks
@@jackhand3429 I like bamboo as I lived in the tropics before, but in Michigan these Black Locust trees grow to the tall heights that I like & my experience with bamboo here is that they don't get anywhere near the locust heights. The way they sway in storms reminds me of when I was in Africa briefly.
Given the incredible utility of the locust trees, I'm surprised to see them 'no recommended' for planting in the landscape. The permaculture community has championed these trees as one of the best trees to propagate, for the rot-resistance of its wood, the speed of growing, The ease of coppicing and the BTU content of its wood. I found this recommendation surprising.
+Joe Fisher I gathered that this is a gardening show, so he's probably not considering how many fenceposts he won't have to replace over his lifetime if he grows some of those trees. I'd bet he would also not recommend Osage Orange for the same reason. Gardeners also consider it to be a trash tree, despite similar characteristics (rot resistance, growth speed, BTUs). But both would have an important place on my farm, for sure!
I think he has Honey Locust and Black Locust mistakenly thrown together. Honey locust will be bored up in a wood pile or rot very quickly, unlike I guess Black locust which is used for fence posts. Once cut down the Honey locust will also throw up suckers badly from the length of its roots over several years.
Reginald Roberts yellow locust as we Cherokees would say ,also known as osage orange, is a very good choice to make a hedge with. I am a boyer so I use it for bows.
if you cut the tops of for a few years you will get a very bushy impenetrable living fence good if you have room for them to spread about 15 feet thick. perfect for wind breaks and privacy
Hello, great video on two of the Locust family. In searching for a stellar wood to make myself a couple of walking sticks, Black Locust, along with Osage Orange are the winners by far in my limited knowledge wood knowledge. I have been trying, with no success yet, to find a source for a piece of Osage limb wood. For Black Locust I think my only option is to reach out to someone like yourself, that has stands of them, and ask if you would cut me a stout limb for a tall walking stick and ship it to San Diego. If you’re so inclined and have the time, I’d be most appreciative and happy to work something out with you.
First Nation inhabitants commonly consumed green goo from honey locust pods.. In fact it's assumed since honeylocust does not grow naturally within the Chicagoland area. The wild growing tree at the mouth of the Chicago River early settlers found when building fort Dearborn. Had most likely either been a seedpod floating to the shore or most likely an Indian had transported and consumed honey locust pod to location. While it's range surrounds our region, so most likely once had until pushed out by glaciers.
I have some type of locust, the leaflets look like the tree that grew out of no where in my yard next to my vegetable garden. Looks like little trees are growing out of the exposed roots near the trunk. Now I see some stick/root sticking up out of the ground that I must of cut rototilling my garden. I remove some soil to cut it down and there's little green growing from it. Same green as near the trunk. Time to remove and poison it before I have a forest. How to kill this thing will be interesting. It makes me a little sad because I loved the leaves, branches are thin and arching and I thought it was pretty. Leaves look more like the honey locust, no thorns though. But I can tell already its invasive, but it has to go. I call it a weed tree. Any advise on how to kill the root system too?
Very helpful. My development (about 60 years old in NJ) has a lot of locust trees. Some are completely podless and others are produce copious amounts of pod droppings. I can't say I've ever seen thorns, but the trees were all about 30 years old when we moved in. So are these trees monoecious or dioecious? I can't say that I've seen any that had a few pods. It's seems all or nothing.
Honey locust can be male, female, or male and female on different branches. Only the females have pods. Almost all honey locusts used in landscaping have been selected to be thornless.
I'm planning to plant a black locust just for the fragrance of its flowers which smell like perfume and it's so powerful you can smell it from several feet away.
black locust makes great firewood and has taken over here on long island ny now that all of pine trees are dying from the southern pine beetle I just wish I could get more to make firewood with
I was told that Long Island locust were brought to the finger lakes in ny for the vineyards. It was a cultivar called shipsmast locust and was known for beautiful long straight poles. The ones he showed me were definately that.
I have a locust tree, I think. The leaves, bark, and the invasive little trees growing near it, is the same as he describes in the video. But it produces NO beans and NO thorns. I live in central California. Would that have something to do with the development of the tree, or the area that I am in. Or is it another type of tree? Anyone know anything about this?
how far north will these trees grow?will the grow in zone 4 usda growing zone?,,, i am asking about the "honeye" locust tree for their use as a possiable fodder source for live stock in winter to give an extra boost of nutrition to help survive the harsh winters we have,, great video
