# Locust?



## Nate Bos (Apr 23, 2014)

I just cut up some of this wood today. I think it is honey locust or black willow, but I am not sure. Any ideas?

Thanks!
Nate


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## phinds (Apr 24, 2014)

Based those end grain shots I can say for sure that it's not willow, but it definitely could be honey locust. I'm assuming that the color of the wood is significantly different from the color shown in these pics, yes?


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## Treecycle Hardwoods (Apr 24, 2014)

Could i get a pic of the bark?? Honey and black locust both have very distinctive bark.


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## phinds (Apr 24, 2014)

Treecycle Hardwoods said:


> Could i get a pic of the bark?? Honey and black locust both have very distinctive bark.


 
I don't know anything about bark and I have a question, based on what you said. Are these two distinctive looks significantly different from each other or are they very similar but easy to tell from other woods?

Also, based on the end grain, this is not black locust, but that doesn't really have anything to do with my question about the bark.


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## Treecycle Hardwoods (Apr 24, 2014)

Paul,
Black and honey locust have very different barks. HL is similar to some fruit trees when it it young but in it's middle age range it is very unique unto itself. When it gets very old it starts to look like some oak bark. 

A young black locust will resemble elm bark but after the black ages a little the furrows are so deep and we'll defined that it is super hard to mess up the id. 

The leaf clusters are the only similar thing about the 2 species with the black having a slightly larger leaf and often a darker green color.


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## phinds (Apr 24, 2014)

Thanks for that, Greg. I sometimes regret my decision, early on, to ignore trees, leaves, bark and such and just focus on the lumber, but then I look at my TODO list and think I've STILL bitten off more than I can chew


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## Treecycle Hardwoods (Apr 24, 2014)

phinds said:


> Thanks for that, Greg. I sometimes regret my decision, early on, to ignore trees, leaves, bark and such and just focus on the lumber, but then I look at my TODO list and think I've STILL bitten off more than I can chew


I am pretty good at bark/leaves for midwest tree species because i worked for trugreen for so many years selling tree care services. Outside of my native species I am novice at best about id'ing by bark but the leaves/fruit/twig/flowers are all useful if you have a reference guide like the national autobon society field guide to trees regardless of where you live. I was lucky to a certain degree that Trugreen published their own guide which each employee got a copy of


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## Nate Bos (Apr 24, 2014)

Thanks everyone for the help. I looked at the end grain pics on Paul's site and I am sure that this is honey locust. Greg, we have lots of Black locust growing here so I know what that bark looks like, but I didn't know we had any honey locust. Your description of the bark helped a lot, it did look a lot like a fruit tree's bark. I don't have any bark pictures but thanks!


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## Nate Bos (Apr 25, 2014)

phinds said:


> Based those end grain shots I can say for sure that it's not willow, but it definitely could be honey locust. I'm assuming that the color of the wood is significantly different from the color shown in these pics, yes?


 
the first and the last pictures are very true to the real colour. They were taken about an hour after they were freshly cut. Today I looked at the piece of wood again and it is a dark brown golden colour.


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## phinds (Apr 25, 2014)

Nate Bos said:


> the first and the last pictures are very true to the real colour. They were taken about an hour after they were freshly cut. Today I looked at the piece of wood again and it is a dark brown golden colour.


 
I've never seen honey locust anything like that color, BUT ... could well be that that's a freshly-cut color which would be why I haven't seen it and if it's moving more towards a honey color then that would make sense.


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## Kevin (Apr 25, 2014)

In my region Honeylocust bark past juvenile/immature often looks like big peices of construction paper or even cardboard glued to the tree with some edges/corners furled outward as if the glue didn't hold well in those areas and the sun dried and furled the paper in those areas.





Mature Black locust bark is usually deeply furrowed (but not always).





Both species can have thorns or not, and they can be on the trunk, the branches, twigs, all, or any combination thereof or none of the above at almost any stage of maturiy.

Black locust tend to have thorns quite more often than not, whereas the thornless variety of Honeylocust trees are very prolific.

Honeylocust thorns are generally noticeably longer than the BL variety.

The leaves are rather distinct to my eye with HL leaves themselves being markedly slimmer than the more fatter BL leaves. BL leaves are 3 to 5 times wider (my own guesstimate) than the HL leaves and usually shorter for comparable size trees. The leaves when viewed as "clusters" are even more distinct to me, with the HL clusters being very dense with leaves and the BL clusters being considerably "less populated" if that makes sense - but only because they are so much larger and they just can't grow as many together in a given sqaure foot let's say, than can the more densely-packed and narrower HL leaves.

Black locust seed pods are toxic, Honeylocust pods are edible. So if you're not sure about the ID of the tree eat some of the seeds from a pod. If you get sick as hell it is a BL tree and if not it's a HL.

Black locust pods are not nearly as long as the curly longer Honeylocust pods.

BL pods look very similar to mimosa pods and also eastern Redbud pods. If I was looking at pods alone I'm not sure I can tell the difference between BL and Mimosa. I've never tried but it would be an interesting exercise. 

HL pods as mentioned are considerably longer than BL and somewhat similar to Catwba pods except curly or spiraled and I never seen Catawba pods do that.

Both species have beautiful flowers during bloom and are popular to hummngbirds, unless there's a Mimosa tree nearby then of course the fast little micro-copters will ignore every other plant and tree in the vicinity and compete for the blooms on the Mimosa almost exclusively. I'd like to be a hummingbird and taste the various nectars to see why they ove Mimosa som much better than everything else - it must be a great treat for them.

HL flowers are usually white but I have also seen them blue and pink or even purple.

I don't remember ever seeing BL flowers any color other than white.

These are my own random observations (not taken from ID books etc.) based on my own region, so your observations may be different in your region - that is a pretty common experience with plants and trees.

Reactions: Like 1 | Great Post 2


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## Treecycle Hardwoods (Apr 25, 2014)

Kevin said:


> In my region Honeylocust bark past juvenile/immature often looks like big peices of construction paper or even cardboard glued to the tree with some edges/corners furled outward as if the glue didn't hold well in those areas and the sun dried and furled the paper in those areas.
> 
> View attachment 49187
> 
> ...


Your honey locust bark is different but similar. Ours peels off also but in smaller patches think more candy wrapper size than construction paper. The black locust you pictured is spot on with what we see in my neck of the woods. Great post Kevin it is a great example of how the same species can have different appearances from region to region.

Reactions: Like 1 | Agree 1


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