season of the black locust - "the poverty tree"

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In a morning walk to the meadow, feet soaked with dew, I was surprised to find trees in flower that I hadn't seen closely yet in our five previous springs at the farm. Don't ask me how that is possible, but it's true. It wasn't that the dozen or so trees hadn't blossomed, because I had smelled their eye-closing fragrance. But I had not really noticed the blossoms closely or even remembered the trees' name.

I didn't know this is the season of the black locust.

See how like pea blossoms they are, falling in racemes. In fact black locust trees are in the Faboideae subfamily of the pea family Fabaceae. At times these blossoms are swarmed by bees; black locust is one of the prime sources of honey in the U.S.

We could call them bees' peas. Wish I'd caught a bee in the frame.





It's named black locust because of its dark bark, which rises in deep furrows. You know how Abe Lincoln famously chopped wood? Well it was black locust logs he chopped - probably for fence posts and the famous log cabin, because it's very sturdy wood. The locust part was named mistakenly for what sustained St. John the Baptist in the wilderness - but this tree is native to North America. The correct tree of "honey and locust" fame is the locust tree of Spain - Ceratonia siliqua (carob tree).





Because the tree grows where nothing else will (it has nitrogen-fixing bacteria in its root system), poet Gerald Stern said:

My identity with that tree has something to do with Judasism and with persecution. The tree is short-lived--forty years maybe--it's asymmetrical, considered ugly, worthless. Farmers value it only as a source of fence posts. People, when they buy land, chop them down to replace them with shade trees--I love that tree, I identify with it; it's my poverty tree. I sometimes see the concentration camp number on the forearm, or forelimb.

x x x x - from Making the Light Come, by Jane Somerville

See how the black branches stand out when the white blossoms are spread full. It sure isn't ugly if you ask me.



You're right to exclaim: How did you miss that!



Robinia pseudoacacia information gathered at wiki.

Here is a sweet poem by Gerald Stern in his choppy, talky style:

The Preacher [As if the one tree you love]

As if the one tree you love so well and hardly
can embrace it is so huge so that with-
out it there might be a hole in the universe
explains how the killing of any one thing can
likewise make a hole except that without
its existence there was neither a hole nor not a hole
I said to my friend Peter and after he left
I walked to the tree again and put my arms
around the trunk or almost did for I was
embracing it preparatory should I say
to its dying for it was one of the many
dying trees along my river mainly
sycamore and locust—

Finish reading the long-ish poem here . . .