Q.
We had a beautiful purple locust in our back yard that produced a profusion of
purple flowers every spring until it was called to locust heaven. Before departing
this world it sent off a runner which has sprouted into a lovely tree that is
now eleven feet tall and producing white flowers. What's with that?
A. I am making a lot of assumptions in answering this. I am assuming what you are seeing is a locust and not some other plant that happened to grow in that location. I am also assuming the flower looks exactly the same as the purple one, just that it is white.
A. I am making a lot of assumptions in answering this. I am assuming what you are seeing is a locust and not some other plant that happened to grow in that location. I am also assuming the flower looks exactly the same as the purple one, just that it is white.
If both of these are correct then
you are seeing the rootstock suckering. The rootstock used for producing the locust
with purple flowers is a black locust. Black locust has white flowers but otherwise
looks identical to the purple locust.
Oftentimes the locust that has
purple flowers is grafted onto a black locust rootstock. The purple part of the
plant dies. Suckers grow from the roots of the black locust rootstock and have
white flowers.
This explains what happened to our New Mexico Locust trees this year in Flagstaff, AZ. Both trees sent up "suckers" a couple years ago and these suckers are now 30 ft tall and standing side by side with the original tree. The original tree flowered purple as usual in early June. But the two suckers to my delight flowered all white. Since the branches are intertwined it appears as if the tree is producing two different colors of flower. Thank you for explaining this. I have not been able to find the answer elsewhere on the world wide web.
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