SEND IN THE CLONES

    

Black Locust is Robinia pseudoacacia or pseudacacia. You can spell the specific epithet either way because Linnaeus did.   It is a strange story. Apparently 32 boys ate the bark of some Black Locust trees that were being stripped for fence posts in the yard of the Brooklyn Orphan Asylum.
Two of the boys were described as being seriously poisoned and became 'stuperous'.   Everyone recovered.   The year was 1887.
     I have no source for the following, it is merely my own speculation but perhaps it became a newspaper story that was spread by the new telegraph system and picked up by editors across the country as a 'human interest' item.     . Here we are 125 years later still keeping the tale alive.
     The report may have resonated strongly with the 19th centuary farmers if it caught them by surprise, as I think it did. They would have known that the trees foliage did not make acceptable fodder for livestock but probably never considered it to be poisonous.
    The mid-June fragrant white flowers are in pendulous clusters like a Wisteria and since it is a legume the seeds are like peas in a pod. It would be quite natural to taste such seeds and find if they were edible but find nothing to entice. Had they infact been poisonous they would soon have known it all too well.
 From the spreading roots, new trees arise at a short distance from the parent and soon form a grove. Since they are clones, they all look alike in form and in their height of about eighty feet.
            The Locusts are most valuable for their ability to improve the soil. They come complete with their own source of nitrogen created by nodules of bacteria on their roots. View them in late October and you will see that they do not bother to recapture the nitrogen in their leaves before discarding them but drop them still green. As much as to say 'Easy come easy go'
     A young lady of my aquaintence told me that she had gone to a school where there was a grove of Black Locust in the adjacent field. The children were forbidden to play under the trees. Despite repeated enquiries she never did get an explanation for this silly rule. It is now five generations from the incident of the 32 boys but apparently the teachers have all heard the same daft story.