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June 16, 1963 - Black Locust Black Locust Exclusive Sunday Review sketch by Dennis Puleston of Brookhaven Focus on Nature by Paul Stoutenburgh, Cutchogue Today Judd Bennett, who I am sure you will all recall has writ- ten many times for this column, brings us an interesting and time- ly article on the Black Locust. ps GUEST WRITER: JUDD BENNETT Black Locust The Black' Locust is covered with the white of hanging flower c l u s t e r s in late Spring. The creamy -white b u r s t i n g out of sweet - scented profusion is the final glory of the now f a d i n g flowering days before summer be- gins. rA tranquil night brightened by a new- season moon is t h e best possible way to enjoy fully these handsome lightly m o v i n g sensitive and snowy f l o w e r s. Moonlight gives them a dreamy rare beauty. While out one night recently in my garden to admire the moon- lighted white -bloom of C r e e ping Thyme I thought of the many plants now arrayed in the palest hues of flowering and harboring the lightest sweetest nectar ready to open on the morrow to entice the bees. The ten honey bee hives I once owned during my teen years were easy to recall. Then, I cared enough to harvest t h e various honeys separately recall - ing also that one really distinc- tive and choice was gleaned from the Black Locust. The luscious odor of "honey" the locust flower releases into the air is one of its most seductive charms. Long - flanked Avenues of locust trees are keenly admired by most of us but a few persons like the tree not one bit. It has an invasive vigor. One would hardly think so but on Long Island it is an introduced tree quite carelessly long con- sidered a most common • native. Anywhere outside of a fair -sized area centered about Arkansas, Oklahoma, eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina it is not indigenous. Most of those we see are "escapes" from older and valued ornamental plantings. Tak- en also to Europe the B l a c k Locust is happier there than it is here. Possibly mere l o c u a t~ have been planted, almost every- where, than all the other trees of wholly North American origin. With the increasing interest in conservation and the problems of stemming and halting erosion the soil- binder and stabilizing quali- ties of the Black Locust should be considered as an aid highly valuable. It is a rugged and tough one. Locust grows to heights of 70-80 feet as a medium -sized erect and thorny tree having trunk diame- ters of two-three feet. A Black Locust around ten years old is a fairly large tree for it is a rapid grower. Away from its native forests the trees are molested by borers and fungus. From the s e p i a- brown grayed and dark barks of the older locust trees, so deeply rigged, cross- hatched and scored up and down into squarish rigid scales young persons broke off big growths of dark brown dead and dry f u n g u s they called "punk ". They. lighted the slow - burning punk and then touched off firecrackers endlessly while making din for long -gone Inde- pendence days. Off the main trunk of a Black Locust grow many slender branches which in maturity shape the tree to an irregular narrowed - top form for the, branches are nearly horizontal. A feature, dis- tinguishing and identifying, is the gaunt beauty of stubby angular limbs on aged trees when bared. The autumn yellows are colorful. When they lose the fight bluish - green short- stemmed and t o o t b- less, once - compound leaves, made up of 13 -15 alternate small and rounded leaflets, faintly lighter beneath, they expose paired thorns and seed pods. These pods are bean -like. six inches long and flattish. They hang on from Sep- tember to April. This points up the Pulse family connection — Bean or Pea family and, too the Sweet - ,pea -Pike form of the flowers. A common name is False Acacia. The seed pods are the end - result of the Spring blooming effort. Quite before the leaves are fully out the flower Clusters un- Md. There is a dab lempa yellow and a touch of pinkish- brushed' green with each delicate w h i t e gem where they are fastened air- ily and delicately to tiny stems. Persons interested in "worth - the- trouble" fence posts made of Black Locust which then is seen as a greenish tinted wood grown durable, hard and strong in the uncertainty of poor soils, under that interesting rugged bark, can find them 'in fields and woods from Nova Scotia southward and on westernward. For wildlife the Black Locust rates. poorly despite an abundant and widespread distribution. Bob - white, Pheasant, Mourning Dove, Cottontail Rabbit and Deer will eat the seeds but as browse the younger shoots cari often be some- what poisonous. Sometime I'd like to see the Roselyn Black Locust at Wash- ington Tavern on a balmy night of brightest moonlight — none have grown larger with roots in the soils of Long. Island. Mean- time, back near the low Thyme beds I can wonder how m any golden -hued honey bees came to the blowering of the- giant this Spring and carefully garnered a treasure of ambrosial locust honey to sip when the next white display will be the dazzle of snow.