permaculture

["Jim Powell (Madison Environmental Justice Organization)" <jimpowell@mejo.us>]

This is great! Thanks.

I have a cord of black locust, and love the way it burns. It's from the 
previous owner of my land who hated black locust because she thought of 
it an an invasive. I also have a great black locust fence, that I sure 
hope last 100 years, as you  write. We border some park land, and that's 
how they treat it too--an invasive to be rid of. It does grow like 
crazy, but then the pioneers here in south central Wisconsin planted in 
on purpose.

Echoing a previous question: any idea why it grows like crazy, at least 
on occasion? Apparently it didn't grow to like crazy for 150 years (when 
the pioneers planted it), but now it does (or people think it does).

JIM
Rock River Watershed
South Central Wisconsin

Jay Woods wrote:
> http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-11242003-154755/unrestricted/etd.pdf
>
> 2.4 Secondary Metabolites of Black Locust and Effect on Animals
> As mentioned previously, the heartwood of BL is primarily used for fence 
> posts,
> poles, railroad ties, and mine timbers and can endure for over 100 years in 
> the soil. Its
> remarkable decay resistance is due to high flavonoid concentrations (6% of dry 
> weight),
> specifically the constituents, robtin (15,000 ppm), robinetin (20,000 to 
> 80,000 ppm) and
> dihydrorobinetin (53,000 to 176,000 ppm)(Smith et al., 1989). Other, 
> flavonoids present in
> the heartwood are butein, butin, fisetin, fustin, and liquiritigenin (Duke, 
> 2000)
>
> On Monday 25 August 2008 12:59:21 pm paul wheaton wrote:
>   
> > I have asked this question about 20 times in all sorts of different
> > places.  Any time anybody seems like they might possibly know ...
> >
> > So I ask it again here.
> >
> > In case nobody knows, I hope that somebody might carry this question
> > with them and maybe some day spot an answer.
> >
> > So we know that black locust wood lasts a long time.  Old time farmers
> > would call it "stone wood" claiming that it would last longer than
> > stones when used as fence posts.
> >
> > Why?  Does it have some anti-fungal property?  Anti-microbial?  I've
> > heard some people say something about it could be because it is just
> > so dense - but that doesn't seem right either.  Other dense woods seem
> > to decompose fairly rapidly.
> >
> >     
> _______________________________________________
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Subscribe or unsubscribe here:
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
> Google command to search archives:
> site:https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture searchstring
>
>
>
>
>
>