Gleditsia triacanthosL.

honey locust

WFO wfo-0000168133 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Gleditsia triacanthos, photographed by Nathan Aaron
fig. a Nathan Aaron, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-19 / obs. 199075839
Gleditsia triacanthos, photographed by Zakqary Roy
fig. b Zakqary Roy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199164446
Gleditsia triacanthos, photographed by Annika Lindqvist
fig. c Annika Lindqvist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205498265
Gleditsia triacanthos, photographed by SnakeyAtWork
fig. d SnakeyAtWork, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199939435
Gleditsia triacanthos, photographed by Zakqary Roy
fig. e Zakqary Roy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198904019
Gleditsia triacanthos, photographed by Shaun Swanepoel
fig. f Shaun Swanepoel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200691718
Gleditsia triacanthos, photographed by Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky)
fig. g Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199690795
Gleditsia triacanthos, photographed by Annika Lindqvist
fig. h Annika Lindqvist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205622471

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 185 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 185 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 57 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Acacia americana Stokes
  • Acacia inermis Steud.
  • Acacia laevis hort. ex Steud.
  • Acacia triacanthos Gron.
  • Acacia villaregalis McVaugh
  • Caesalpiniodes heterophylla (Raf.) Kuntze
  • Caesalpiniodes triacanthum (L.) Kuntze
  • Gleditschia triacanthos L.
  • Gleditsia brachycarpa (Michx.) Pursh
  • Gleditsia brachycarpos (Michx.) Pursh
  • Gleditsia bujotii Neumann
  • Gleditsia bujotii unranked pendula Van Geert
  • Gleditsia bujotii var. pendula Rehder
  • Gleditsia elegans Salisb.
  • Gleditsia excelsa-pendula de Vos
  • Gleditsia ferox Desf.
  • Gleditsia ferox var. nana (Loudon) Rehder
  • Gleditsia flava K.Koch
  • Gleditsia heterophylla Raf.
  • Gleditsia horrida (Aiton) Salisb.
  • Gleditsia inermis var. elegantissima Grosd.
  • Gleditsia inermis var. elegantissima Grosdem.
  • Gleditsia laevis G.Don
  • Gleditsia latifolia hort. ex Lavallée

and 33 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.