Honey Locust: March 2024 seeds

The car park at work (and lots of places nearby) has a bunch of trees that I have tentatively identified as thornless honey locusts. For a while I thought they were Jacarandas, but firstly none of my identification apps disagreed, and secondly, I’ve never seen them flower like Jacarandas.

Honey Locusts grow fast under poor conditions (i.e. like car parks)

I was hoping this meant the grounds staff keep track of the tree species, and I have an open query out about it. Still waiting, Ben.

Honey Locusts are in the legume family (like peas) and grow seeds in big pods. They rattle around in there.

So what else am I going to do?

That yellow fiber on the inside smells vaguely of honey. In the wild this entices large animals to eat the pods and so process the seeds. I sanded them a little instead.

About 50 seeds in the end. I tried to crack a few, because I got good results from that, but these seeds were just too hard.

And planted, then moved outside. Apparently 4 weeks till germination, and then we’ll see if they make it through the winter.

EDIT: It looks like these are going to grow fast. Two weeks later, and voila.