Hey All, Need to draw from your wisdom please. I'm thinking this is black locust, not for sure though. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Absolutely. It's only through this sight that I even found out about Black Locust. This forum is a tremendous source of information with a lot of years of wisdom to draw from.
What is the difference between Black Locust and Honey Locust? I mean how do you tell the difference? And is the burn quality different? I asked this because someone on here commented on a picture I posted where I though I had been cutting Honey Locust and was told that my firewood looked more like Black Locust.
That was me. Black locust. Unmistakable deeply furrowed bark. Honey locust. This is the hybrid variety of honey locust which is commonly a yard planting. The wild HL has BIG thorns. Ive never seen a wild one around here. Both are excellent high btu firewood's. HL takes longer to season. Ideally two years or more.
BL has deep furrowed bark, HL is a thinner bark and the wild variety has large thorns on the trunk. BL leaves are similar but the leaflets are larger than HL. BL has smaller thorns in the twigs by the leaves. They are similar in BTU but HL takes longer to dry in my view. I haven't burned much BL, but I have a lot of the HL. There are also yard varieties of HL that are thornless, they make good shade trees. Honey Locust, this one didn't have a lot of thorns. Some HL looks like this. This is one of the worst ones I've had to deal with. Most aren't this thorny and many don't have thorns above 20' or so.
Thank you for the clarification. I believe all of mine are more then likely Black Locust. This has been a good education, thank you for posting the pictures.
Brad's spot on with the difference. I'll also add that honey locust smells super sweet when it's fresh cut. IDK if it smells like honey, but it's really a sweet good smell.
That one and many more similar to it. You get used to it and it makes some pretty good lumber too. I always have good cut resistant gloves on and good boots. I try not to drop them on paths where we will be driving or walking if I can avoid it. Then I knock all the thorns off with the chainsaw before skidding them out to another area to process. They are very nasty to get poked with so after a couple of times, your whole body is on high alert when you are anywhere close to them. Straight logs become boards and the curvy / knarlies become firewood after 3 years of drying. There is some sort of rot that can be inside them and that is a pain. You never know if there is any in there till you open them up on the mill. I've had a few nice looking logs that I was thinking would yield some nice boards and ended up getting tossed to the firewood pile. The grain is interesting and it works like oak. I wish we had as many Black Locust as we have of the HL. I would love to re-do the porches, steps, and deck with BL.
As much as I'd like to be able to tell some bloody tale about a chupacabra or Daryl Sasquatch as we're closing in on Halloween, the real story is much more boring... Our state forester when he first started coming here to assist us, was under the impression that I was a just a fat old guy trying to get a tax break and would never follow through on his requirements or suggestions and he'd have to kick me off the program. In walking through the woods he started marking trees he reccomended be culled out and was marking them with red paint (blood colored of course). He mentioned that all the HL in that section of the woods be culled out to allow for the Black Walnut to have more sun and nutrients. I mentioned that I was pretty sure I had a good handle on what Honey Locust was and that he didn't have to mark them, but he kept on marking them since our tax dollars provide an endless supply of paint. LOL On a later visit he made, we were walking the Walnut planting area and he saw a HL stump that I had cut off at the ground and had noodled it so I could move it to the firewood area. He shook his head and said, "years ago, I used to teach a class on sharpening chain saws, but I've never seen chips like that. You must show me how you sharpen chains." He was impressed and has treated me as an experienced woodsman ever since. There is no way I'm gonna tell him the secret of noodling and and either make him feel like I'm trying to talk down to him or let him know it was just an ordinary round file job like anyone else does... LOL I like him and he is VERY knowledgeable and it's nice not being viewed as a rookie although when it comes to forestry I am pretty green... I've been trying to get him to join the club here and if he has, I've just outed myself, but I'm assuming like most professionals, when he gets home from work, the last thing he wants to do is hop on a blog about the very thing he did all day...
