The wild, mother species of Common Honeylocust is usually full of nasty thorns on the trunk, branches, and larger twigs. There are some wild thornless trees out in nature also. Cultivars have been taken from the thornless variety, but some cultivars have come from buds high up on the more common thorned trees. The tree grows in upland sites from central Pennsylvania to all of Louisiana and eastern Texas up to eastern Nebraska and Iowa to spots in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois through far southern Michigan back to Pennsylvania. It is fast growing of about 2 to 2.5 feet/year and lives about 150 to 200 years. The species is in between being monoecious and dioecious where one tree will have mostly one gender of flower and a little of the other. Therefore, some trees produce a lot of the brown, woody, curving pea-like pods to about 12 inches long with big brown seeds inside with thick seed coats, and other trees few or not-so-many pods. It is easy to transplant despite that when older it can develop a taproot or deep lateral roots. The thornless and mostly podless cultivars are now being the most commonly planted shade & street tree, now that Green Ash has met disaster with the Emerald Ash Borer. The cultivars make neat, clean, windfirm trees. One can easily mow the fallen leaves into the lawn or they make a good mulch for planting beds for the winter.

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The thorns on this plant can grow over 20cm long! I didn't measure these while I was out in the field, but I can tell you, they are imposing! It's been said that in the past these were occasionally used as a substitute for nails. I can believe it!

The branch structure on these plants is non-uniform and rather untidy. One individual (main) branch can be quite long, while another may be just a bit over stub length. This trait is most apparent in younger trees.

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