THE HONEY LOCUST.
Gleditsia triacanthos, Linn.
The honey locust is a tall handsome flat-topped tree, with stiff horizontal, often drooping branches, ending in slim brown polished twigs, with three-branched thorns, stout and very sharp, set a little distance above the leaf scar of the previous season. Occasionally a thornless tree occurs.
Inconspicuous greenish flowers, regular, bell-shaped, appear in elongated clusters, the fertile and sterile clusters distinct, but on the same tree. The leaves are almost full grown when the blossoms appear. Their feathery, fern like aspect is the tree's greatest charm in early June. When the pods replace the flowers they attract attention and admiration as their velvety surfaces change from pale green to rose and they curve, as they lengthen, into all sorts of graceful and fantastic forms. The sweet, gummy pulp of the honey locust pods is considered edible by boys, who brave the thorns to get them. As the autumn approaches, the pulp turns bitter, and dries around the shiny black seeds. The purple pods cling and rattle in the wind long after the yellow leaves have fallen. One by one, they are torn off, their S-curves tempting every vagrant breeze to give them a lift. On the crusty surface of snowbanks and icy ponds, they are whirled along, and finally lodge, to rot and liberate the seeds. It takes much soaking to pre
pare the adamantine seeds for sprouting. The planter scalds his seed to hasten the process. Nature soaks, freezes, and thaws them, and thus the range of the honey locust is extended.
In the wild, this tree is found from Ontario to Nebraska, and south to Alabama and Texas. It chooses rich bottom lands, but is found also on dry gravelly slopes of the Alleghany Mountains. Trunks six feet in diameter are still in existence, preserved from the early forests of the Wabash Basin in Indiana. They tower nearly one hun dred and fifty feet above the ground, and their branches are a formidable array of thorns (see illustration, page 198), that have grown into proportions unmatched in trees of slender build and fewer years. Such a veteran honey locust is one of the most picturesque figures in a winter landscape.
Honey locust wood is hard, coarse-grained, heavy, and durable in contact with water and soil. It is made into wheel-hubs, fence-posts, and fuel. In all temperate countries this species has been used as a shade and orna mental tree and as a hedge plant.