wikipedia moment

[Frederick W. Schueler]

Everyone,

A wikipedia moment is when you observe something new, look it up, and
find that it's a well-known phenomenon (my first was seeing Curly
Pondweed surviving the Lakeview Estates herbiciding, and another the
germination of a lot of Pokeweed from the seedbank after a cold winter
had killed off all the plants here).

The Honey Locusts (Gleditsia triacanthos) that the Browns planted in
front of their new house, back in the 1990s, have spectacularly biennial
seed production (this year's massive crop has come down around trees
still mulched by the pods from 2023, but there were only about 6 pods
produced in 2024), and the pods blow at least 100 m along the streets,
but we've never seen a seedling. This inspired two thoughts: 1) the
Turkeys are ghastly slackers to let all these seeds go to waste because
they were too shy to come into the village, and 2) these pods must be
intended for consumption by Mastodons or other extinct megafauna.

A quick google turns up that "The large, sweet pods of honey locust are
considered 'evolutionary anachronisms,' meaning they evolved for
dispersers that no longer exist... [and] Mastodon remains have shown
honey locust pod remnants and seeds in their preserved stomach contents
and dung, confirming they consumed them."

It turns out that Honey Locusts are English-named from the sweet goo
around the seeds inside the pods (stand by for an evaluation of whether
this persists into January), and that the specific epithet references
the spines on the trunks of wild-type trees (the generic name is from a
German director of a botanical garden). It was another wikipedia moment
that the flowers which produce these canopy-blackening masses of pods
are themselves minutely inconspicuous.

Honey Locust is a species-at-risk in SW Ontario, but the thornless
cultivars are widely planted far NE of their native range, and they're
considered invasive species around the globe, suggesting better sexual
reproduction than we see in Bishops Mills.

This was a very conspicuous spring of bloom for the
also-considered-invasive Black Locusts, but only very scattered heavy
production of pods, and I'm not sure the biennial regularity of out
Honey Locusts is seen elsewhere, so I wonder what others have noticed
about locust podding?

fred.
------------------------------------------------------------
---------Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad ------------
Fragile Inheritance Natural History - https://fragileinheritance.ca/
6 St-Lawrence Street Bishops Mills, RR#2 Oxford Station, Ontario K0G 1T0
on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44.87156° N 75.70095° W
------------------------------------------------------------

[Frederick W. Schueler]

On 1/12/2026 12:28 PM, Frederick W. Schueler wrote:
> It turns out that Honey Locusts are English-named from the sweet goo
> around the seeds inside the pods (stand by for an evaluation of whether
> this persists into January)

* in January the moist interior of the pod has a sweet Pear-like flavour.

[Aleta Karstad]

Fred neglected to mention that he had me taste the creamy goo lining the inside of the old, wet, crushed pod - and my surprised response was “It tastes like pear, and very sweet!”

Aleta

> On Jan 12, 2026, at 12:28 PM, Frederick W. Schueler <bck...@istar.ca> wrote:
>
> Everyone,

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[Matt Keevil]

Our household Honey Locusts never fruit and I have not kept track of the annual patterns. I did know about the sweet pods but haven't tried it myself nor have I tried to make the 'beer' that can be made from it. Apparently it's a recommended species for permaculture because the wood is quite useful (similar to or slightly above Ash in strength and hardness but unlike Ash it resists decay), the pods are good livestock forage, and in a drought the trees can be felled as browse for livestock. 

Matt

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[Candice Vetter]

We have a few honey locusts and they make pods, but I would not describe them as invasive. They don't seem to have huge reproductive success, but I may try the pods next year if we get some.

---

Candice

 

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[Frederick W. Schueler]

On 1/14/2026 8:21 AM, 'Candice Vetter' via NatureList wrote:
> We have a few honey locusts and they make pods, but I would not describe
> them as invasive. They don't seem to have huge reproductive success, but
> I may try the pods next year if we get some.

> On 2026-01-13 11:46, Matt Keevil wrote:
>
>> Our household Honey Locusts never fruit and I have not kept track of
>> the annual patterns.

* here's what I sent to the Times (Aleta can reduce the megapixelality
of the photos and send them to the list):

Mast Years for Missing Mastodons

Fred Schueler – Fragile Inheritance Natural History

Honey Locusts are named from the sweet goo around the seeds inside the
pods (which is still sweet and pear-flavoured in January), and the
specific epithet of their scientific name (Gleditsia triacanthos)
references the three-pointed spines that cover the trunk and lower
branches (the generic name is from a director of a German botanical
garden).

The Honey Locusts that the Browns planted in front of their new house,
on the Buker Road spur of the Bishops Mills intersection, back in the
1990s, have had spectacularly biennial seed production, though other
trees may produce fewer pods, or none at all. This year's massive crop
of foot-long pods has come down around trees still mulched by the pods
from 2023, but there were only about 6 pods produced in 2024. We first
noted the pods in our doing-the-streets surveys in 2004, and recorded
big crops in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2023, and 2025, with
sparse production in 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2020, 2022, & 2024.
These alternations are called “mast cycles” (from the Old English “mæst”
– the nuts of forest trees accumulated on the ground) and they are
thought to keep seed predators from building up big populations or to
reflect climatic differences among years.

Honey Locusts are a species-at-risk in southwestern Ontario, but in
eastern Ontario we only see thornless cultivars, which are widely
planted far beyond their native range. They are considered an invasive

species around the globe, suggesting better sexual reproduction than we

see in Bishops Mills, where, despite mast years covering the street with
seeds from driven-over pods, or on rainy days with foam from crushed
seeds, we have never seen any seedlings.

This inspired two thoughts: 1) the local Turkeys are ghastly slackers to

let all these seeds go to waste because they were too shy to come into
the village, and 2) these pods must be intended for consumption by
Mastodons or other extinct megafauna.

A quick google turns up that "The large, sweet pods of honey locust are
considered 'evolutionary anachronisms,' meaning they evolved for
dispersers that no longer exist... [and] Mastodon remains have shown
honey locust pod remnants and seeds in their preserved stomach contents
and dung, confirming they consumed them."

Before the end of the last glacial period, when human hunters arrived,
North America was dominated by a fauna of giant mammals: Mastodons,
Mammoths, Ground Sloths, ancestral Camels and Horses, Beavers the size
of Bears, and their size-appropriate predators. It’s thought that the
spiny trunks of wild-type Honey Locust served to protect the trees from
browsing, just as the seeds were adapted to germinate only after passage
through elephantine guts, and that various otherwise anomalous features
of many surviving tree species were adaptations for dispersal and
against browsing by megafauna which are no longer present.

This means that when we see the canopy of a Honey Locust black with
giant pods we should be reminded of the mass extinction we precipitated
as we spread around the globe, that global warming has allowed Honey
Locusts to be planted north of their pre-settlement range, and that we
should be doing all we can to sustain and enhance the diversity and
integrity of global ecosystems.


--

[Aleta Karstad]

[rmb...@istar.ca]

All I know of honey locusts is that I flinch whenever I see one, which
is fortunately very rare in our part of Ontario. When I lived in
Dayton, Ohio during the '80s, the ex and I camped on summer weekends
over near Richmond, Indiana. We liked to camp near the edge of the
forest where it was quieter, but I instantly learned to keep away from
the trees. There was a row of honey locusts sporting their nasty
spines at the edge of the forest, more than once I got stabbed by the
darned things. The camp owner had a large property with the
campground contained in a small section of it, the rest of it he kept
as his own private "conservation area". Many of the farmers and
landowners in the midwest chopped down their honey locusts because of
the nasty spines, but this fellow tried to keep everything natural.

On a side note, I am truly lamenting that I didn't have field guides
and the digital technology we have now, I enjoyed wandering down hill
and exploring along the creek that ran through there. There were all
kinds of birds, box turtles, and other things that I would have had a
great time with documenting. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Rose-Marie

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[Frederick W. Schueler]

On 1/14/2026 11:36 AM, rmb...@istar.ca wrote:

> There was a row of honey locusts sporting their nasty spines at the edge
> of the forest, more than once I got stabbed by the darned things.  The
> camp owner had a large property with the campground contained in  a
> small section of it, the rest of it he kept as his own private
> "conservation area".

* the thornless cultivars are such wimps! They may be necessary for
trees planted along city streets, but having only them around is a
desecration of the species' character - very similar to the grok AI
posting undressed photos of people.

f.