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Index of Subjects Hi All, Regarding Black Locust. Just some anecdotal bits and pieces for anyone who wants to know how Black Locust stack up as yard trees. My house at Round Hill has several very large old Black Locust in the front yard. They are on the property line, so I assume they were planted there quite some time ago. The house dates from around 1840 or so. Several of the trees were cut down many years ago and were already very large. The stumps of those trees are still in my yard as they are like rock. A neighbour who has a bush lot and sells timber, sawed down a snag for me and said the wood was really hard cutting. Something I have noticed here and at other locations is that these trees become very tall and often lean, seeming to reach for light. Still, they seem quite secure in spite of looking a bit precarious. The snag in my yard had probably been standing for decades - barkless and with the wood hard like steel. There are a few similarly large Locusts on my neighbour's lawn, and a couple growing down on the hillside below my place. A house that was abandoned (now being restored) down the road from me, also c.1840 has a few old ones around it as well as a grove of younger ones that probably grew up from the roots. My neighbour (now deceased) who lived in the house with the Black Locusts in the her yard told me that, when she was a young girl growing up at Lake Munro in the 1930s, there were Black Locusts on either side of the lane planted many years before by a relative. She also mentioned that the famiily was a bit ticked off as the trees became so large and sent out roots growing more trees. That's probably their main downside -- the roots extend very far and then new trees pop up here and there. I had to be away from my place for awhile a couple of years ago and returned to find many 3 to 4 foot tall trees in my perennial garden where there had been none a year before. The young trees have razor sharp thorns. When I'm weeding my perennial beds, I have to watch that I don't grab a shoot coming up among the weeds. They really cut. There were Black Locust at my farm in Ontario as well - at the very back of my land around the ruins of a log cabin on a homestead said to date from around 1850 or so. What probably started off as a few Black Locust trees a century ago, had, over time, turned into a dense grove of them that was probably about 3 acres in size. This consisted of several old trees surrounded by legions of young ones. The ones about 2 to 5 metres in height have very scary thorns -- the branches are long and supple and will snag you with the thorns. I always joked about how we didn't have to worry about anyone sneaking in through the back of our farm as they would be entangled in the razor-wire. So, that's the downside of them. Well, actually, the other downside is that they are rather messy trees when they start dropping leaves in the autumn. You can't rake them up as the fronds disintegrate into small pieces. On the good side, the birds love the Black Locusts in my yard. Warblers and other birds are attracted to them as it seems that there are always many insects and caterpillars on the leaves. Some birds also eat the flowers and the young leaves. Some years, the flowers hang in great clusters and attract so many pollinator insects that the whole yard hums to the point that I can hear the humming from indoors. It's quite remarkable. Last year, there were very few flowers as we had that unusual freeze after the flowers had almost bloomed. The flower buds and leaves completely dropped off -- even at the top canopy of these very tall trees. I wondered what might happen -- if they would get new leaves or if they were done for the year. They did send out new leaves about 3 weeks later, but only a few scant flower clusters appeared. As the trees on my property have aged, the upper branches have become heavily encrusted with lichen. I had a flock of about a hundred Bohemian Waxwings show up in my yard in early March and many of them picked at the lichen in the treetops for about a half hour and then the flock moved on. I think they were after the lichen, but maybe there were some springtails or other creatures in the lichen. I posted a photo of this on iNaturalist: https://inaturalist.ca/observations/22261894 The bark of the older trees reminds me a little of Shagbark Hickory -- being almost like armour plates, and deeply fissured. I've seen birds go inside of some of these plates of bark. I often wonder if bats might make use of all the gaps and fissures in the bark. Nuthatches, Chickadees, Creeper and Woodpeckers all spend a lot of time digging around in the bark. It is true that the wood does give off a lot of heat, but I find the corky bark sort of unpleasant smelling when it burns. Also, if you are going to cut up the wood, it's best done when it is green and don't let it dry out or it is like sawing through a piece of iron. As the trees have aged, the upper branches have gotten corky and sometimes break off in the wind. The smaller branchlets often break off in strong winds so that there are often a bunch of 1 to 2 foot long bits strewn on the lawn after a storm. These small branchlets have sharp thorns, so they are a slight nuisance to pick up. The trees have a nice wide canopy -- they grow very tall before branching out -- so they provide a huge amount of shade. The branches can grow to be very long and are quite flexible, allowing them to bend wildly in strong winds. All in all, I think they have many positives in spite of the thorns and the rather tenacious habit of sending up new saplings in the lawn and garden. regards, Bev Wigney Round Hill
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