HONEY LOCUST
(Gleditsia Triacanthos)

This tree has never suffered for want of names, but most of them refer either to the sweetness of the pod or to the fierceness of the thorns. The belief has long prevailed that it was the pods of this tree on which John the Baptist fed while a recluse in the Syrian desert. The tradition should not be taken seriously. It was certainly not this tree, if any, which furnished food to the prophet in the wilderness, for it does not grow in Syria. Some related species may grow there, for species of Gleditsia occur in western Asia as well as in China, Japan, and west Africa. The generic name is in honor of Johann Gottlieb Gleditsch, a German botanist who died in 1786.

The name honey locust refers to the pod, not the flowers. The latter are greenish, inconspicuous, and though eagerly sought by bees, they offer no particular attractions to people. Few persons ever notice them.

In some of the southwestern states the tree is called black locust, though for what reason it is not apparent. Sweet locust, by which name it is known in several states, has reference to the pods, as do the names honey, and honey-shucks locust, applied in different localities. Many persons in naming the tree have thorns in mind. It is known as three-thorned acacia, thorn locust, thorn tree, thorny locust, and thorny acacia. The botanist who named it considered thorns a characteristic, for Triacanthos means “three-thorned.”

No one who has ever had dealings with the thorns, will fail to duly consider them. They are about the most ferocious product of American forests. The tree’s trunk and largest branches bristle with them, standing out like porcupine quills, and sharper than any needle devised by human ingenuity. Microscopists use them for picking up and handling minute objects, their points being smooth and delicate though their shafts may be strong and rough. Thorns are arrested branches, coming from deep down in the wood. No more can one of them be pulled out than a limb can be extracted by the roots. They come from the center of the tree or limb. Some put out leaves and become true branches, but others sharpen their points, assume an attitude of hostility, and remain thorns to the end of their lives. Some of them are a foot long, and are so strong that birds flying against them are impaled and meet cruel death. A well-armed trunk is proof against the agility and skill of the squirrel. He cannot negotiate the thorns, and probably he tries only once. The hot pursuit of a dog will not compel him to attempt it. All trees, however, are not formidably thorned; some have few, and certain varieties have none.

The honey locust is sometimes called the Confederate pin tree in the South. This is a reference to the Civil war, and the use occasionally made of the thorns by soldiers in mending the rents in their torn uniforms. The thorns were once put to a somewhat similar use among the Alleghany mountains where local factories for carding and spinning country wool employed them to pin up the mouths of wool sacks.

The natural range of honey locust has been greatly extended by man. It was not originally found east of the Alleghany mountains. It grew from western Pennsylvania to northern Alabama and Mississippi, and westward to Nebraska and Texas. It is now naturalized east of the Alleghanies, and southward to the Gulf of Mexico. Planting for ornamental purposes and for hedges has been the cause of its extension into new territory. In spite of thorns, it is ornamental. Its foliage is thin, and its flowers inconspicuous, but the tree possesses a grace which wins it favor. It grows very rapidly, and in a short time a seedling becomes a respectable tree, and continues its rapid growth a long time. In southern Indiana and Illinois, which is the best part of its range, trees have attained a height of 140 feet and a diameter of six. The average size of forest-grown specimens is seventy-five feet in height, and two or more in diameter.

The leaves are seven or eight inches long, doubly compound; the fruit a pod a foot or more in length, which assumes a twist when ripe, or sometimes warps several ways. The green pod contains a sweet substance often eaten by children, but it is believed to be of little value for human food. Cattle devour the pods when in the sugary condition; but they cannot often obtain them, because thorns intervene, when the pods would otherwise be in reach. In rural districts, a domestic beer is brewed from the young fruit. The juice extracted from it is permitted to ferment, but the beverage is probably never sold in the market.

The pods are in no hurry to let go and fall, even after they are fully ripe. They become dry, distort themselves with a number of corkscrew twists, and hang until late fall or early winter, rattling in the wind and occasionally shaking out a seed or two.

Honey locust has never been considered important from the lumberman’s standpoint. Sawlogs go to mills here and there, but never many in one place. The wood is not listed under its own name, but is put in with something else. Occasionally, it is said, it passes as sycamore in the furniture factory, though the difference ought not be difficult to detect. It doubtless depends to a considerable degree on the particular wood, for all honey locust does not look alike when converted into lumber. Some of that in the lower Mississippi valley might pass as sycamore if inspection is not too conscientiously carried out. The medullary rays, being darker than the body of the wood, suggest sycamore in quarter-sawed stock. Some of it goes into furniture, finish, balusters, newel posts, panels, and molding, particularly in eastern Texas. In Louisiana, where wood of similar texture and appearance might be expected, it is not looked on with favor, but is employed only in the cheapest, roughest work.

The principal use of the wood is for posts and railroad ties. It lasts well, and is strong. Claims have been made that it is generally equal and in some ways superior to locust. It is difficult to see on what these claims are based. It is lighter, less elastic, and much weaker. Figures showing the comparative durability of the two woods are not available, but in like situations, locust would doubtless last much longer. As timber trees, the former may have the advantage over locust in being free from attacks of borers, attaining greater size, and thriving in a much larger area. It has been planted for ornament in other lands than this, and is now prospering in all the important countries of the temperate zone. One variety is thornless, and is known to botanists as Gleditsia triacanthos lÆvis; another has short thorns.