My Honey Locust Tree

AN EXPOSITION OF THE SEEDY UNDER-BELLY OF LIFE UNDER LARGE TREES

My huge old Honey Locust tree had a pod-a-thon this year. This is my pile just from this week--following a severe windstorm that swept through the Midwest.  This is not nearly all the pods--some are still clinging to the monstrous mother tree and I have another larger mound like it on the other side of the sidewalk. One annoyed owner of a honey locust tree has described the pods as "littering the yard like brown piles of poo."

I was informed by some garden club friends who spent most of their lives in Africa that the pods are used as a food source. I wonder if anybody in Michigan is hungry for some pod stew. I'm sure other honey locusts had "bumper" crops this year as well. We could pool our pods for the food pantry--or for an interesting new side dish for the homeless feast on Thanksgiving Day. Actually, the hard, rattling seeds from these mature pods would have to be roasted and ground up (see below) for a coffee substitute.

Raking all these pods makes me wonder how many more years I am going to put up with this. A fall like this after a summer that seemed relentlessly hot has made the whole notion of condo life increasingly attractive.

The roof is loaded with leaves and pods as well, and I don't even want to think about how clogged the gutters are. These pods don't mulch so well, either. I will probably bag them and make another trip to the free city yard waste site.

This year's excessive pod and leaf production may just put me over the edge--hopefully not over the edge of the roof when I have to clear it! If I didn't believe that all this exercise and outdoor air/sunshine was good for me, I would probably have decided years ago to throw down the rake.

Some Honey Locust Pod facts gleaned on-line at Buzzle.com--comments in parenthesis, mine.

• Its pulp can be fermented and used as energy alcohol and also for extraction of sugar. 
• The seeds can be dried, roasted and ground and used as a substitute for coffee.
• The seeds, raw or cooked can also be used in food as they taste like peas. (A kind of legume, I guess.)
• The unripe pods can be eaten after cooking.
• The pods of the honey locust tree are also eaten by wild forest animals like rabbits, deer, squirrels, and birds too. (Have been used as fodder for livestock as well.)