Species › Plants › Honey Locust

Honey Locust

Gleditsia triacanthos

CommonPlant
Illustration of Honey Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos)
Safety note: Large thorns on trunk and branches can cause serious injury.

Honey Locust is a thorny tree of eastern bottomlands with extraordinarily long, branched thorns on the trunk and branches. Its large, flat seed pods contain a sweet pulp that was eaten by megafauna like mammoths and giant sloths during the Pleistocene. Today, cattle, deer, squirrels, and birds consume the pods, dispersing seeds.

Habitat
Bottomlands, floodplains, and disturbed upland forests in eastern North America
Diet
Pods eaten by cattle, deer, squirrels, and birds for the sweet pulp
How common
Common

Best time to see a Honey Locust

The best time to see a Honey Locust is March–August, when about 60% of U.S. sightings happen, based on 30,008 research-grade iNaturalist observations.

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