Mystree ornamental? Is this honey locust?

I delivered a half cord this morning. This was growing in the side yard. Is it honey locust? Ive seen pics of the thorns on here. Though it was cool to see in person. Wouldnt want one growing in my yard though.
ground was littered with "rabbit dropping" sized berries under them.

 

The thorns look correct but the bark, not so much. Also, honey locust puts out a long, wide seed pod not individual berries like shown in the picture. Maybe they really are 'rabbit raisins'!
Maybe the tree is some sort of hawthorn?

 

I was thinking hawthorn as well.

Doesn't look like honey locust at all to me.

 

I agree, definitely not honey locust.

 

I'm sticking with hawthorn.

 

Rabbits like hawthorn berries.

 

i looked it up after your first reply and i think it is hawthorn as well. Never have scrounged or encountered either, just have seen pics of the HL thorns on here. Cool to see it in person though.

 

We have tons of both Honey Locust and Hawthorn here. Definitely NOT in the yard. A couple of the towns near here have lots of large HL in their parks and I'm always surprised at that. Thorns and all with kids and frisbees... I dropped a bunch of both over the weekend cleaning out an area in the woods. I run my saw up and down the trunk to knock the thorns off then rotate the log 90 degrees and do it again. Heavy duty work boots are a must when working with them. I'm gonna try to cut a couple slabs out of this HL crotch. If the grain is really nice, maybe they'll become coffee tables. If it's just OK grain, maybe benches. Hard to know what it will look like till it's opened up. I painted the ends so it dries more evenly when it gets cut. I saved 5 crotches today and there are a few more I want to save that I'll get some evening this week. This HL had a ton of really nasty big thorns but I already cleaned them off. I try not to bring the thorns into the yard so I'm not popping lawnmower tires. The rear tires on the Fergy don't get bothered, but I keep extra inner tubes for the front cuz those thorns will poke right through those tires.

 

I once saw a beautiful floor a guy milled from honey locust logs cut from his farm. Probably the best looking wood flooring I've ever seen.

 

Like others have already said, honey locust doesnt have those round fruits, they have long brownish flat pods. They are particularly fragrant once they fall and start fermenting, almost sickly sweet.

 

I've heard several people comment that HL is a very nice looking wood for use in and around the house. I haven't gotten to use any yet for "nice" stuff, but having so much of it on the farm is one of the reasons I wanted to get a sawmill. I'm planning on milling enough for a nice deck on the rear of the house and a boardwalk out front up to the porch. I've used it for several other projects so far and it's very hard and dense, similar to Oak. Outdoor benches and stuff like that holds up pretty well with it.

Just not enough hours in a day to get it all done...

 

After reading about these thorns and tires I’m glad I do t have any. Though I’d love to see a pic of an entire floor.

 

That crotch on my skidder looked similar to this before I cleaned it off. Fortunately most aren't nearly this bad, but some of them are really pokey!

 

After seeing that im glad they are not that common around here. The thing that amazes me is you purposely cut it down. I hate retrieving wood in a pricker patch let alone a "pricker" tree.
Thanks for sharing MAF143 some cool pics. Would love to see pics of the lumber milled as well.

 

Ahhh, so my basement build flamethrower does have a use. Good to know.

 

Ant killer? I burn ants in wood with my little propane torch. Found a bunch on Saturday while splitting and they are toast now.

 

I’d toast those thorns off a bit before attacking those trees.
One other nice thing about hydraulics. I run the little ant colony’s under the muffler for a second or two. Sometimes longer if they’re frozen. Not as effective as a torch but pleasing nonetheless.

 

Someone who deals more with HL may be better to advise....but in my limited dealings with HL in the past, I'm not too sure that the torch would do much with the thorns. Those buggers are tough and made to last. Me thinks mechanically (and carefully) cutting them off is the "best" route...

 

You get used to it and grab things slowly, with kevlar gloves... LOL Our state forester would like me to get rid of all of the Hawthorn and Honey Locust since they aren't commercially viable timber. The Hawthorn is typically smaller understory stuff and sometimes gets big enough to be used as firewood, but other than that, I haven't found a use for it. The thorns on it are usually single long thin needles, but can get like your first post on the trunks of the more mature Hawthorn. Most of it just goes into the nature piles. The HL is a tough, long lasting, nice looking wood that I just hate to see go to waste and we have soooo many of them and some big enough to get some hobby lumber for me to do projects with. I'm playing with different things to keep me occupied when I retire in a few years and I'm pretty sure it will involve wood... and probably crotches...

The side rails and headache rack on my truck were made from HL. Not primo HL, but it should last a while. I'll stain it later in the summer once it dries out good. I used some really nice knot free heartwood for the uprights, but all the other boards will probably get beat up and are easily changed. My chain sharpening vise set up is a slab of HL.





This pic is on the old truck and I've also added a C-clamp on the end of the slab so it's kinda like a stump vise for on my tailgate.

 

The best way I found is to just quickly rev up the saw with the bar laid flat against the trunk and slide it around. They pop right off. I try to get them with the top of the bar so they are thrown away from me instead of at me! It doesn't take long, just another step in the process while limbing. They usually are only on the bottom 15-20' of the tree, rarely are they in the upper part of the tree, but not allways. Boots and good gloves are the most important part. My Carolina logging boots are great, but my old boots I had to put steel insoles in to make sure the thorns laying on the ground didn't come through the softer soles. Tennis shoes... NO WAY, in a momentary lapse of reason, I had some tennies on and a thorn came right through and out the top of my shoe... Luckily it was between my toes... NEVER AGAIN. My wife has black spot on the bottom of her foot from a Locust thorn from when they moved to this farm when she was a kid. She also has a dot right between her eyes from a thorn that got her a couple years ago. She doesn't take kindly to being called "Cyclops"... The pokes always seem to get infected and take forever to heal.


BUT, THE FLAMETHROWER WOULD BE MORE FUN...