True Root Nursery

Hershey Thornless Honey Locust Seedling Bareroot

Special Note: We take special care to grade out (remove) any of these seedlings that are showing visible thorns when we dig them in the fall. This increases the likelihood (although we cannot make any guarantees) that you will not have thorns develop on your Hershey Thornless Honey Locust Seedling. If you don't mind thorns on your Honey Locust, the ones we grade out are available here at a lower pricepoint.

Species: Gleditsia triacanthos

History: The mother variety of these seedlings, Hershey, was developed by John Hershey in the early half of the 1900s. After witnessing the destruction of the Dust Bowl, Hershey knew that trees could play an important role in creating more resilient agriculture and sought out nut, persimmon, honey locust, and oak trees in the wild with desirable traits. Hershey was selected for its large pods, thornless nature, and high sugar content (up to 30-40%!). Some of his original grafted trees can still be found in the US today.

Why We Grow It: Our Hershey seedlings will generally be thornless and produce large, sweet pods similar to what made their parent so desirable. However, with natural variation be aware the pods may not be as large and/or sweet as the original Hershey trees and the seedlings may still produce thorns! The pods are great for livestock feed and the sweet pulp can be used in baking, tea, and making beer. The trees themselves are also nitrogen-fixing, popular with pollinators, and have durable, rot-resistant wood. 

    $22.50

    Size:

    Out of stock

    Fruit Traits:

    Recommended Use: Baking, tea

    Fruit Size:

    Storage:

    Harvest: September - Mid

    Plant Traits:

    Canadian Hardiness Zone: 4

    Soil Preferance: Prefers loam but adaptable to other kinds of soil

    Flowering Time: Spring - Late

    Pollination Requirements: Honey Locust trees are generally only male or female. A female tree must be pollinated by a male tree in order to produce pods. Our seedlings are too young for us to determine whether they are male or female.

    Sun/Shade Requirements: Full sun (approx. 8-10 hours of sun daily)

    General Growth Habit: Tree reaches 20-30m tall, vigorous, flowers May to June

    Shipping: Every year we ship thousands of plants across Canada. We carefully bag roots in damp sawdust, then box them and send them out via courier. CLICK HERE to see our shipping policy.

    Pick-up: We also have thousands of plants picked up from our nursery each year. The pick-up options is free, though you must wait until you have been emailed a confirmation that your order is ready to pick up, which will have further information such as hours, locations, etc.

    When Will My Order Be Ready?

    Most of our bareroot plants and tubers are only available for spring planting! Only bareroot apples and pears are available for fall planting.

    Spring orders are generally ready to be picked up or shipped out anywhere from late March to late May! We will be in touch in the spring once your order is ready to go. Orders placed in the spring might not be ready for 1-2 weeks as this is a very busy time of year for us.

    Hershey Honey Locust seedlings are divided into the following grades:

    -1 year plant - 15-40cm

    There is some overlap in size since we are also taking the age of the plants into account. Some older plants may not have put on quite as much vegetative growth but will have larger root systems.

    All of these heights exclude the roots since seedlings and some berries will often have a lot of root growth but relatively little vegetative growth (ex. our Shagbark Hickories seedlings are often 5-15cm above the soil but will have roots that reach 20cm+ in length).

    Not all of our berries and seedlings will be available in all of these grades since growth rate can vary significantly across species and even varieties. While we remain competitive in our plant size, it's also worth noting we don't use synthetic chemicals to push vegetative growth, therefore you may find conventional nursery stock larger in some instances comparatively.

    Why plant small? It's best to transplant when a plant is young so it can establish its roots before it has a lot of vegetative growth. This is much less stressful on it and bareroot plants tend to catch up and even surpass larger potted ones planted at the same time, after a few years.

    Orders that are cancelled last minute due to size (being "too small"), will still incur the applicable cancellation fees if the plants are true to our grading standards as per the agreement of sale when the order was placed.

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