{"id":2427,"date":"2018-06-04T05:19:26","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T13:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=2427"},"modified":"2018-06-04T05:19:26","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T13:19:26","slug":"the-lure-of-the-locust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/the-lure-of-the-locust\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lure of the Locust"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"It<\/a>
It looks like wisteria, but it isn’t–black locust.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not long ago I was on a road trip just as the mid-spring flowering trees were bursting into bloom.\u00a0 Cascades of white, wisteria-like blooms billowed from many of the trees along highways in central New York State.\u00a0 They stood out, even as we whizzed by at highway speed.\u00a0 Every once in awhile, a pink-flowered tree with similar blossoms popped up.<\/p>\n

What were those magical trees?<\/p>\n

When I see flowers that look like wisteria, I automatically think of members of the legume family. \u00a0Old-fashioned taxonomists call this family Leguminosae and modern ones call it Fabaceae. \u00a0Whatever you call it, the legume family is full of beautiful, essential plants, including species from garden peas to peanuts.\u00a0 You can eat the fruits of legumes or feed them to animals.\u00a0 The flowers of some species produce nectar that bees turn into very tasty honey and the roots fix nitrogen in the soil, which is essential for fertility. \u00a0If you have ever seen a garden pea plant in flower, you will have a good idea of what many legume flowers look like.\u00a0 Wisteria, for example, features drooping flower bunches composed of scores of pea-like blossoms.<\/p>\n

Though hard to see from the highway, the gorgeous trees had compound leaves\u2014groups of small leaflets arrayed in clusters on the branches.\u00a0 Those leaves, plus the distinctive flowers marked the trees as locusts, which are members of the legume family. \u00a0The looks of the leaves, plus flowers, stature and other attributes confirmed the trees\u2019 identity.\u00a0 They are Robinia pseudoacacia, sometimes also known as black locust or false acacia.\u00a0 While quite common in some areas, they are thoroughly uncommon when it comes to beauty.<\/p>\n

Robinia is native to southeastern North America, and was one of the first North American natives taken to Europe by early explorers.\u00a0 Linnaeus named it after gardener and herbalist Jean Robin, who served King Henri IV of France.\u00a0 According to Martin Rix in The Botanical Garden<\/em>, a Robinia, planted in the seventeenth century, survived in the Jardin des Plantes botanical garden in Paris until sometime in the 1980\u2019s.\u00a0 A Robinia planted in 1759 still stands in England\u2019s Kew Gardens.<\/p>\n

The \u201cpseudoacacia\u201d part of the Latin name\u2013which gave rise to the common name \u201cfalse acacia\u201d\u2013refers to the leaves, which resemble those of its relative, the acacia tree.<\/p>\n

So how do you recognize a robinia?\u00a0 \u00a0The trees can be as tall as eighty feet, with furrowed bark.\u00a0 The leaves are very small and pinnate or feather-like, arranged in odd-numbered groups of five to nineteen on opposite sides of the stems.\u00a0 The fragrant, wisteria-like flowers are pendulous, appearing in mid to late spring.\u00a0 The most common Robinia pseudoacacia cultivars generally have white flowers, but some species sport pink ones.\u00a0 One variety, Robinia \u2018Purple Robe\u2019, has dark pink blossoms and, according to one catalogue, purplish new foliage that turns green as it ages. \u00a0The flowers are succeeded by flat, brown, bean-like seed pods.<\/p>\n

Robinia has many virtues including beauty, hardiness and fast growth rate, which is why it is sometimes planted as a street or roadside tree.\u00a0 It is also tolerant of pollution and poor soil.\u00a0 The blossoms attract pollinating insects, especially bees, making it valuable for urban and suburban ecosystems.\u00a0 With hard, rot-resistant wood, black locust is also useful for things like fence posts that have to survive outside.\u00a0 When properly dried it also makes great firewood.<\/p>\n

With all those virtues, you would think that there would be a robinia on every street corner from southern New York State south.\u00a0 However, like many good things, including chocolate and fast cars, robinia has liabilities.\u00a0 It suckers and self seeds readily in many places, so vigilance on the part of the gardener is in order. \u00a0Suckers can be easily removed with loppers and the seedlings can be pulled, hoed or mowed down. \u00a0I have to confess that I don\u2019t get as excited about seedlings as many people, probably because I have a lovely maple tree in front of my house that produces hundreds, if not thousands of seedlings a year. \u00a0They can be a pain in the neck, and occasionally, the lower back, but nothing more, and I wouldn\u2019t think of removing a magnificent tree because of them.<\/p>\n

In some places, black locusts are also vulnerable to locust borers, which bore into the bark, allowing pathogens to infiltrate the trees. \u00a0A call to your county extension agent will help you determine whether or not locust borers are common in your area.<\/p>\n

The best solution for any pest problem is to avoid a monoculture where a single genus or species predominates.\u00a0 Planting robinia on your property\u2013if you have the room\u2013will add variety to the standard oaks and maples, give you great flowers in the spring and make the all-important neighborhood bees very, very happy.<\/p>\n

For a good selection of robinia species and cultivars, try ForestFarm, PO Box 1, 14643 Watergap Road, Williams, OR 97544; (541) 846-7269 or www.forestfarm.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not long ago I was on a road trip just as the mid-spring flowering trees were bursting into bloom.\u00a0 Cascades of white, wisteria-like blooms billowed from many of the trees along highways in central New York State.\u00a0 They stood out, even as we whizzed by at highway speed.\u00a0 Every once in awhile, a pink-flowered tree … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[1878,1879,1881,17,1874,1877,1876,344,1875,1381,1880],"class_list":["post-2427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-bean-family","tag-fabaceae-family","tag-honey-plants","tag-legume-family","tag-locust-trees","tag-pink-locust","tag-pink-robinia","tag-pollinator-friendly-plants","tag-robinia-pseudoacacia","tag-spring-flowering-trees","tag-wisteria-relatives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2429,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427\/revisions\/2429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}