Description
Honey Locusts are tough trees. They often sport absolutely wicked thorns! In cultivation, many people like to avoid these thorns by growing and planting Thornless Honey Locusts (THL), which are a subspecies of the regular Honey Locusts.
THL are very common street trees, displaying their adaptability to very tough conditions, lack of water, lack of rooting area, heat radiating from pavement, fumes, salt…and THL grows beautifully!
Honey Locust was one of the trees profiled in the book “Tree Crops”, the pods are noted for their sweet quality as animal fodder “the cows eat the beans as fast as they fall” and it “offers a great crop possibility to a million square miles of the eastern United States in the climates of corn and cotton”.
Other great qualities of this tree are its nitrogen fixation, its light shade which would be great for mushroom yards, and quick growth.
These first year THL are seedlings grown from nice mother trees with good form and pod production. Being seedlings, there is a small chance that they will come out with thorns, and anecdotally they can begin to express thorns upon heavy injury. However most of these seedlings will come out as beautiful thornless trees with tons of pods!
In the future I hope to offered grafted THL from super productive varieties (check back in Fall 2024!)
