Anyone know what plant this is?

Well, if it was in my yard in Michigan, USA I might suspect it was a black locust tree (Robinia pseudoacacia). And I certainly wouldn't want it growing right by my house. (As it's also considered an invasive, non-native pest, I probably shouldn't tolerate it in my yard, even though I love them in bloom and remember them fondly from Indiana.)

Seeing as you are in Australia, I suspect some sort of Acacia (wattle).

In any case, you probably don't want a thorny tree growing that close to a building, so digging it out or otherwise destroying it would be my advice.

snipped-for-privacy@someplace.net.net (Pat Kiewicz) in news:W4WdnceTH6hBYTDYnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

i didn't look at all the photos. some cassias are weedy.

look for a likely-looking parent plant in the neighborhood. i'm not sure what critters would move hard legume seeds around.

Where did you get the idea that Robinia pseudoacacia is non-native to the US?

It looks very much like a locust to me. If that's what it is it will become a very large tree whose roots send up shoots like that all over the place. My advice would be to get rid of it asap.

Jacqui

digging it up,but in the end i won.

They do spread like crazy and will choke other plants. Von.

"Growing out of control" is usually pretty indicative of a weed species.

Take a look for comparison:

-- Karen

The Garden Gate

looks like it might be a honey locust (?)

YES!!! as you said below. There are little shoots that look just like it that come up all over my front lawn. And when I say all over it's a pretty big lawn and they come up in random places pretty far from the plant.

pretty

With thorns like that, it isn't any sort of Australian acacia that I've ever seen. I agree with others who think it's a robinia. But from your description of the shoots all over the lawn, it sounds like it's sending up suckers from another tree somewhere - nature strip tree maybe???

They are lovely trees but better suited to farmland than suburbia. I'd get rid of it in your situation, but I'd check first to see if it is suckers from a neighbouring tree of if it's coming from a seed origin somewhere. If it's suckering, you may just have to keep cutting the suckers out (depending on whether you want to kill the parent tree or not and that may not be desirable), but if it's seed then nuke them.

Thanks for all your responses. After checking our pics I'm sure it's robina. For the moment i have cut the plant/tree down (it was pretty tall), drilled holes in the drunk and filled it with round-up (weed killer).

I'll see what that does to it before trying to dig up the roots and follow it.

Luke

Farm1 wrote:

Kiewicz)

It's non-native here in *MICHIGAN* and has been moved to other areas of the US where is it also non-native and can be invasive. It's one of the plants that Nature Conservancy volunteers grub out of local preserves on work days.

Thanks for your explanation and special thanks for the website reference. I now know a bit more than I did before you replied, and expect that further reading of the website will reduce my ignorance even more.