The Chinese honey locust is a tree species with both ecological and economic benefits, worthy of vigorous promotion
The Chinese honey locust is a tall tree with a full-fruiting period lasting 200 years, and is an ecological and economic multipurpose tree species with broad development potential in our country.
The Chinese honey locust is drought-tolerant and water-saving, with a well-developed root system, and is suitable for growing in areas with a frost-free period of no less than 180 days, a minimum temperature not below minus 20°C, at least 2400 hours of sunlight, and rainfall not exceeding 800 mm. The Chinese honey locust is heat-tolerant, cold-resistant, and pollution-resistant, making it a good tree species for urban and rural landscape forests and road greening, and also an important hedge species. The Chinese honey locust can fix nitrogen, has wide adaptability, strong stress resistance, and high comprehensive value; it is a preferred tree species for natural forest protection projects and farmland-to-forest conversion projects, can improve soil well, and when mixed with pine trees can suppress the occurrence of pine caterpillars. The Chinese honey locust tree grows relatively fast, and its wood has good physical properties and is relatively hard, making it an excellent timber for crafts and a honey-source tree species.
Our country's annual demand for plant gum is more than 40,000 tons, but our country's annual output is less than 3,000 tons, far from meeting market demand. In addition to using related substances produced at the cost of consuming large amounts of grain as substitutes, 400 million yuan is spent each year to import guar gum from abroad. However, the Chinese honey locust plant gum isolated by our country's scientists from Chinese honey locust seeds has colloidal properties similar to imported guar gum, and the gum content of Chinese honey locust seeds is as high as 30%-40%, far higher than the gum content of herbaceous plants.
In recent years, the United States, Canada, Brazil, France, Italy, Australia, Eastern European countries and others have successively established Chinese honey locust plantations, cultivating Chinese honey locust just like planting fruit trees, and the cultivation of Chinese honey locust has gradually moved toward varietal selection.
After nearly 10 years of surveys, field trials, and analysis, relevant experts from the Research Institute of Forestry of the Chinese Academy of Forestry and other institutions have clarified the distribution of Chinese honey locust in northern China, constructed the core population of the northern production areas of Chinese honey locust, selected 4 excellent germplasms, and carried out off-site preservation and low-temperature storage of seeds.
The Chinese honey locust is also called the "soap-pod tree." Class Dicotyledoneae, family Fabaceae (subfamily Caesalpinioideae). Deciduous tree, up to 30 m tall, with thick branched thorns, even-pinnate compound leaves, leaflets 3-7 pairs, oblong-ovate to ovate-lanceolate, with fine blunt serrations along the edges. It blooms yellow-white flowers in spring, polygamous, with axillary racemes. The pod is strap-shaped, brown-black, slightly thick, and can reach more than 30 cm in length. It is produced in the Yellow River basin of our country and areas to the south.
The wood of the Chinese honey locust tree is solid and fine-grained, used for making furniture. The pod is rich in saponin, making it a high-quality natural detergent. In traditional Chinese medicine, the pod, seeds, and thorns are used as medicine; the pod is slightly toxic and functions to resolve phlegm and open the orifices, mainly treating excessive phlegm with cough and asthma, lockjaw from stroke, epilepsy and other conditions; the seeds function to moisten the intestines and relieve constipation, mainly treating dry-intestine constipation; the thorns function to draw out toxins and discharge pus, mainly treating carbuncles, swellings, and sores.