My first time posting pictures. I promised Cutting Edge on the phone while chatting about large trees that I'd put up pics of the oldest and biggest Black Locust trees I've ever seen. I think I over estimated the size cause I think I told him that my arm span would be about right for the diameter of them. For scale I'm 6'2" tall and 280 pounds. Yep, they're stacking "it" high and wide these days. It's weird cause I eat less than all the rest of my family and work harder and longer and sweat like a faucet but no weight seems to come off after I quit smoking last year. I digress - I think I remember reading that one's arm span is the same as their height, so yall can figure these to be pretty big darn trees.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/37630/locust.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1497837503)
This first one is the easiest one for me to get to. There's 4 locust all together here but I can only get to 2 of them cause the rest are brushed over pretty good and I wasn't messing around too much in the heat.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/37630/locust1.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1497837548)
This is the full view of the first one, taken from next to the old barn, standing in the driveway to the old place.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/37630/locust2.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1497837593)
This is the other locust I can get to without too much mountain goating.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/37630/silvermaple.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1497837623)
This last one is a big old Silver Maple that's in the front of the old house by the road. I figure these trees gotta be around 300 years old or so cause that's when this particular area was settled out I think. Biggest darn trees around here - this is about 4 miles away from my place and where I grew up most of my life at the old place where my dad still lives.
Anybody ever see black locust this big before? Not me. Not even by half. Hope yall enjoy the pictures. :)
I figured out that the secret to posting pics is lots of trial and error to line spacing and using the preview function. Once I got the hang of it (pretty short learning curve) it went along pretty quick! My next pics should be of my old machinery and mill and stuff around here like I promised a few folks a few times. It'll be coming soon cause I got my cut list done for my back porch and it's all stickered and drying now, so a little more time is available for a little while.
Them are big ones!!!
iv seen them big but not that big a lot of the locus around here is starting to die off
Great pictures. I'm a huge fan of locust, actually need quite a bit and should make a FF posting soliciting locust poles and could get some $ to the forum. In the midst of moving so that will be on the weekend. Those are large locust but I think some of them are larger than the maple.
Secondly, Congrats on the smoking! Huge huge important thing for you. When you hit 60 that is going to start making a tremendous difference in your life and I guess it is already saving you $. Read an article this week about how rich people have mostly stopped smoking and poor people haven't and that ticked me off, why haven't poorer people stopped smoking? Because smoking makes you poor.
I digress, great pictures and thanks for posting.
coxy - ya know, I've got a few smaller young ones around here that are standing dead and have been for years. I'd like to know what causes them to die. All the others are growing just fine. The way locust sends up suckers and how fast they take off you'd think they'd be voracious but sometimes not so much. Any ideas?
nativewolf - thanks for your kind words. It was weird cause this morning checking the posts I remembered about putting up pics for the whole world to scrutinize and I got a little nervous feeling which was very, very weird for me. I'm the type of feller who don't give two "schlitz" about what other people think about how I look most of the time.
I also am a huge fan of locust and if every tree on my little place was black locust I'd be happy as a pig in poop. I like the way it's rot resistant, the grain look, the color, all of it. I cherish it. Gave my boy hell cause he used a locust sapling as a whack-and-leave holster for his machete just cause it was close and handy to the shed where he dabbles in a little blacksmithing. It's OK now. He won't do it again. He's usually a pretty good boy.
Wow :o. Those are some biguns!
Most on our place in Va seem to die before they get big.
These old guys are at the end of a dairy barn where the cows come in and go out so they get good nutrition from the manure I reckon. These guys are also at the end of another dairy barn that was built back in the 1700s. The old stone foundation is just to the left of the locust. So they've been around cows and manure at the bottom of that hogs back so all the runoff is going right to them all their lives. I'm betting this has something to do with it. There's also a small spring coming out of that hogs back right at the old barn foundation and you can see they built the milkhouse around it for cooling the milk in the cans all that time ago. So constant watering and fertilizer made some monster black locust trees!
Them is some big ones ,but i could see them better if that guy wasnent in front of them trying to fly ;Djust kidden
:D I'm tellin' ya, I'm tired of NY's crap and I want OUT! I tried flyin' away but it didn't work out...
I see you're in Kentucky - it's on my list of free states. You're fortunate, I hope you know that. :)
ox I'm going down there sometime in late aug early sept my buddy has 20a there in mount Vernon told me if I wanted to move there I could squat on his place for a few years till I found something of my own 8) ;D if we like it there it may happen sooner than later
some close, but never that large. I too, am a fan of Black Locust.
Nice post Ox, thank you
D
Those locus wow! We have a silver maple here that's about the same size as the one you showed. Around here the black locus are few and far between but the honey locus are like weeds. Hedge are plentiful so if we need rot resistant that's what we go for. Good to finally put a face with a name.
On that silver maple I shoulda went 90° to where I was standing cause it's alot bigger looking at the side of it. I wasn't thinking well apparently. It was hot as the pits of hell that day.
Nice trees 8)
I'm curious to know if those locust are simply hollow barrels at this point. Carpenter ants love black locust. There's been some pretty big wind since I've been alive around here and nothing has even damaged them. I'm thinking they'll keep on keeping on for a long time to come and will likely outlive all of us.
That's by far the biggest locusts I've seen. They seem to be dying around here. There still some black locust post back on the ridge that has been there almost 70 years but I'd hate to have to dig the hole to set the ones that you have ox.
Those are some big ugly sticks lol
Quote from: Ox on June 22, 2017, 10:35:34 AM
I'm curious to know if those locust are simply hollow barrels at this point. Carpenter ants love black locust. There's been some pretty big wind since I've been alive around here and nothing has even damaged them. I'm thinking they'll keep on keeping on for a long time to come and will likely outlive all of us.
That's something I never understood, the carpenter ants. What gives eh
East ky logging - Never mind the hole for the post, what are we using for the fence wire? Bridge cables? :laugh:
4x4 - I never understood how the carpenter ants like locust. Weirdest thing ever. Fence posts can last 100 years or more cause nothing can touch them but the stupid ants will hollow one out sure nuff.
I also have one of the small woodpeckers (not the big turkey sized ones thank God, them ones'll bout tear a tree apart) that likes a certain black locust that's only about a foot diameter and pecked a hole/nest out of it and has at least one real noisy and squawky youngun in there. There's probly 5 or 6 old holes/nests there from previous years. Seems they just keep moving up the tree. This one is kind of under one of those shelf type tree shrooms and it acts like a little roof almost.
Ahhhhhhhhh - the things we upstaters find amusing and interesting... 8) :D
Carpenter ants only remove and hollow out rotten/punky wood, not solid wood.
It's amazing how/why so many Black Locust trees have a hollow center, but that is the nature of the tree. The pith of all trees is already dead and Black Locust looses it's tap root early on relying on it's feeder roots for nutrition as well as physical support. When the tap root dies and rots, the pith is soon to follow. The most solid heartwood is the portion closest to the thin layer of sapwood.
Do you have ant friends that told you this? lol lol
Ants ain't my friends, but they are the largest (number wise) species group to inhabit Earth. :P
Ohhh, so you were operating like a double naught spy when you wrenched this information out of the ants? ;D
:-X Spy's don't talk. ;D
I think I remember that it is one of those several stage things, locust borers, then the fungus, then the ants?
I don't think I've ever cut a particularly old locust ???
We call them houcous locusts :D. I here there is a lot in N.Y. thanks for posting.
Ox,
Now we know what you look like ;D.
Which one was he? All that I see is trunks with limbs sticking out. :D :D
WDH - I ain't scared. :snowball:
Heck, I was wondering if your monitors would be breaking when my ugly mug went up on em!