View Full Version : Purple flowered black locust trees?
carbide
06-08-2009, 11:30 AM
In all my life I have never seen a purple flowered black locust tree, until yesterday. I was driving along the river a couple of miles from my house on my way home from working some bee hives. I stopped along the river to talk with some fishermen, when I spotted a small tree with purple flowers on it. Since I could see that the tree was a black locust I assumed that there must be a vine growing up into the tree that was responsible for the flowers. When I got closer to the tree I could see that the flowers were in fact growing on the tree branches. They were about the same color as the flowers on a wisteria.
Does anyone else have any purple flowered black locust in their area? I plan to keep an eye on this tree and pick some of the seed pods when they are ready. I wouldn't mind having some purple flowered black locust growing along with the white flowered black locust that I already have growing on my property.
I believe it is called Purple Robe
Bizzybee
06-08-2009, 07:10 PM
Ran across those up around 4000 ft near Mt Mitchell in WNC about 15 years ago. Had to do a double take when I first saw them.
Not Black Locust though. Don't recall the name, HVH may have it right. Same family though.
Go to this site and see if this isn't a description of your tree.
http://plantsbulbs.suite101.com/article.cfm/purplerobelocust
Bizzybee
06-08-2009, 07:48 PM
Could be what carbide is seeing? Not what I saw in NC. They grow as a true tree and not a shrub like this purple robe. The blooms are true purple, no hint of pink at all. Of course that could be a result of soil content as well.
carbide
06-09-2009, 06:27 AM
DRUR,
Looks like the tree except that the flowers were definitely purple and had no shade of pink in them. As I stated in the original post I have never seen this before and since the tree is on public property along the riverbank I'm going to get some of those seeds for planting.
Bizzybee,
Elevation here is only around 1100 ft.
Ardilla
06-09-2009, 08:16 AM
It is probably not the locust you are talking about, but the only native locust here has purple flowers. They call it New Mexico locust (Robinia neomexicana). It is a very nice looking tree.
Ran across those up around 4000 ft near Mt Mitchell in WNC about 15 years ago. Had to do a double take when I first saw them.
Not Black Locust though. Don't recall the name, HVH may have it right. Same family though.
I live in Reno, NV and we have quite a bit of Black Locust with one variety being Purple Robe. I don't know what the tree being discussed is but I do know some varieties of Black Locust have different color flowers with Purple being one of them.
Ben Brewcat
06-09-2009, 08:47 PM
I have a purple robed black locust in our yard. BEAUTIFUL. Bees love it.
carbide
06-10-2009, 12:57 PM
i now have about 50 black locust trees on my property that started from 4 mature trees 9 or 10 years ago. I've been allowing them to self propagate as they please. This year I had about 25 of them with various numbers of flowers on them. They are all white flowered variety.
By this time next year I intend to have some of the purple flowered variety sprouting so that I can have a mixture of the two.