anyone ever have a problem with Honey locus making them sick? haven't seen it on any of the lists of toxic woods but yesterday I was pruning and cutting some down and then I started feeling really sick wondering if it was some reaction to the wood or something else.
I saved a bunch of the wood, but I'm not really all that interested in milling it if it's toxic.
Richard
It may be to you. Tough to tell what may affect any individual. Since its heartwood is listed as very resistant to decay, it's going to be loaded with fungicides and bactericides.
You could Google on it, I guess - but it's "locust", not "locus".
Dunno anything about the wood, but the *fruit* is edible - and darn tasty, actually. Open up the ripe seed pods in the fall; there's a pulp in between the seeds that's quite sweet (hence the "honey" part of the name). It seems to me that, if the fruit is edible, it's unlikely for the wood to be toxic... but I could be wrong. And you could be allergic to it, so maybe eating the fruit isn't a good idea for you.
By the way... to a deer, honey locust pods are candy. To a deer hunter, a tree stand, or a blind, overlooking a honey locust grove is a good place to be.
Cattle love the pods, too. Black locust dust is rough on the lungs, but I've never heard of honey locust doiong a number on anyone. That said, just about any saw dust is hard on lungs in some manner, and all woods are listed as carcinogens these days, so precautions are best taken. As an incidental point, black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) is much more readily found than honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos).
There's also always the possibility the OP has some kind of allergy to the wood, as you stated.
"Charlie Self" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:
Or an allergy to something else that was blooming yesterday. The jasmine is flowering here, and that's harder on me than any wood I've encountered.
Patriarch
Richard, Any legume (plant with seed pods) can cause allergic reactions, depending on personal sensitivity. I have a friend who is sensitive to black locust only when it is green. Go figure. I just went to a show in Davis, CA, and had some honey locust bowls (a domestic tree without the thorns). They all sold. The wood has wonderful color, and is very hard. I also have heard that the seeds are used to make beer.
Where are you? Any chance of getting some of your tree? I don't really need any more wood, but...... robo hippy
Richard Clements wrote:
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