Dr Bigwood said:
My father in law has many black locust on his property. The previous owner tried to control the evasiveness of the black locust by cutting notches in them. Thus causing them to die slowly.
Can't remember the term for this method????? Shunting?
So now there are great number of standing dead black locust.
It's called girdling.
Black locust has long been considered a weed tree, mainly because it grows fast and has a broad canopy that shades out other, more valuable species, like pine. It doesn't have much commercial value because there is no market for locust lumber. However, it has some interesting characteristics that have made it desirable for some applications, mostly in the past. For one thing, the wood doesn't rot, is very strong, and grows straight and tall. That makes if perfect for fenceposts and other applications requiring strength and longevity. Check any old fenceline in areas where it grows, and the posts are probably black locust. My parents have a tree farm in central Wisconsin, and the fenceposts there are locust and date back to before the Great Depression (not the one we're heading into now). The fences are still standing in many cases.
It's also a legume which means, like beans and other nitrogen-fixing plants, it actually improves the soil it grows in. If you look at a pine plantation with black locust growing in or near it, the pine trees that have escaped the shade but are near the black locust stand, actually are bigger than their counterparts farther away.
And finally, as noted earlier, it's about the best firewood, pound for pound, that you will find in North America. My dad just started burning some that he cut a couple of years ago, and now says it's his firewood of choice. This is from a guy who has burned nothing but red oak for the past 40 years. Apparently it's lighter than oak, but burns hotter and longer. That's important to a guy in his late '70s.
There's quite a bit of black locust around here in Central NYS where I live, but I have yet to get my hands on any. I do bicycle past many black locust stands as part of my summer exercise routine, and I have to stop periodically to wipe the drool off my handlebars.
