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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-059
Honey Locust
Gleditsia triacanthos
Honey Locust is a legume that, unlike most of its family, does not fix nitrogen - it earns its place a different way, as a fast-yielding fodder tree. Its sweet pods start bearing within three years, and by year eight a single tree can drop 20 to 75 kg of them, which sheep, cattle, goats and deer all eat eagerly, sometimes choosing the pods over hay or soybean meal. The pod pulp is sweet enough to eat raw, and the roasted seed makes a passable coffee substitute. The wild form carries three-forked thorns up to a foot long, but thornless cultivars exist, and its canopy casts a light, filtered shade that other plants can grow underneath - unusual for a tree this size.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 4–8
- Soil
- Sand · Silt · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 5–8.2
- Plant type
- Deciduous Tree
- Mature height
- 60–80 ft
- Mature spread
- 60–80 ft
- Plant spacing
- 60 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-deep
- Spread pattern
- Both
Keep exploring
Similar plants
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Juniperus deppeana
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Almond
Prunus amygdalus
Almond flowers earlier than almost any other cultivated tree, which is its biggest weakness as much as its gift to early pollinators - a warm…
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American Basswood
Tilia americana
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American Beech
Fagus grandifolia
American Beech is a slow, long-lived shade tree that can establish and eventually fruit even under an existing forest canopy, unlike almost…
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American Chestnut
Castanea dentata
American chestnut once carried the sweetest nut of any chestnut species and covered more than 200 million acres of eastern forest, but an…
Canopy · USDA 5–8
American Elm
Ulmus americana
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Canopy · USDA 3–9
The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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