Locust Trees

kenroginski

Hello.
I live in Central New Jersey and am in love with Locust Trees. I have done a lot of reading and just became more confused with conflicting information w Black Locust and Honey Locust.

I love the rough bark, and the sweet smell of flowers and the non-dense shade allowing other sun loving plants to grow nearby. I would like to plant the tree near a sidewalk and am concerned about the roots and suckers. I have only read about this concern, for those I see, from what I can tell, do not have thorns or suckers nor are near damaged walkways.

To avoid a root problem, I have been reading about Root Barriers either angled to send roots deeper, or angled up so roots can be trimmed. Will this work?

Any advise is very much appreciated.
thanks in advance, ken

Eric Frei

There's a couple of types.

One type is some sort of plastic large planter box you put in the ground with the trees and it's supposed to send roots down. I dont like that one.

The other is when you cut a slot say 600mmdeep and insert a plastic sheet in the ground. Roots travel along, hit the sheet and go left or right unless it's a ficus and it just goes over the top.

Whilst they have been claimed to last 10 years etc there is reports of them breaking etc under that.

I'd be encouraging you to put down something like that parallel with the walkway.

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treevet

Black locust, Robinia, and Honey locust and thornless cultivars (Gleditsia) are very shallow rooted to begin with and to restrict a large portion of their root system might unadvisable esp. if a target (house, etc.) is on the opposite side of the root barrier side. They both grow rel. quickly and get large.

newguy18

large and sometimes thorny.Its been a few years since i've cut or done anything with a locust tree.

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old schooler

treeseer

Then you love the Robinia and not the Gleditsia. Time to read a little more, so you are clear on that. To end the sucker problem you will need a barrier on the ground, like weed-stopping fabric, covered in mulch.

Robinia is a tall-growing tree, so do not plant it in a small place. Suggest you consider another flowering tree for this location.

treevet

Many people (my neighbor) mistakenly choose to spray herbicide on (root) suckers for crabapples, blacklocust, silv. maples, etc.. These suckers are connected to the tree like any other part of the tree and will take in the poison and cause injury.

treevet

nbor is a corp lawyer and I have told him before, and it is not even his tree technically (city's).

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vitex42

Gotta love that Chemical Weeding. Totally sucks. Don't know how many golf courses and parks I've seen where they neatly spray a circle around each tree with Glyphosate (which is supposedly non-residual but I think otherwise).

Chemically-weeded trees always seem to be as stunted as hell, with unnatural taper too

treevet

How can there not be a residual, I agree. Even more so, any break down by products that persist are likely harmful as well. Dr. Alex Shigo confirmed this in a faxed reply of a question I asked of him.