Honey Locust Tree and Mega Fauna

We have a few honey locust trees down on the farm. My father says there used to be more of them, but when I was very small something killed most of them off. They are a pretty tree, but they have some really wicked thorns on them. The tree does not get its name from being a good honey plant. It is given the name because of the sweet taste of its seed pods.

Honey locust has been growing in popularity in the United States with the rise of permaculture. Cattle can eat the leaves and seed pods, they provide good shade, some people use the thorns as nails, and when used as timber it lasts an exceptionally long time.

I think the most interesting part of the honey locust is the thorns.They are usually 1-4 inches long. They can easily go into your foot/shoe, or the tire of a car and tractor. It is believed that the thorns evolved on the tree to protect itself from the mega fauna that roamed around North America before the last ice age ended. Ruminants today will kill these trees when they are small by eating all the leaves off them. The thorns do not prevent this, but a fully grown tree would be able to prevent mega fauna from stripping it bare. Honey locust grows from Texas up to Pennsylvania.

Honey locust trunk with poison ivy

I did some research on the mega fauna of North America during the Pleistocene period to see what animals would most likely have fed on this tree. These are the wooly mammoth, mastadon, stag-moose, and the North American ground sloth. I can definitely see why trees would need some protection against these animals. A wooly mammoth could probably strip most of the leaves off of a tree for a quick snack. They would most likely be able to knock a tree over if they leaned on it.