Scientific Name
Gleditsia triacanthos f. inermis ‘Sunburst’
This is one of the most popular of the thornless honey locust cultivars that was developed after World War II, the others being ‘Shademaster’ and ‘Skyline.’ Its success owes mainly to the lack of the dangerous thorns of the native species, with the added bonus that, like the other cultivars, it usually doesn’t produce messy seedpods. In addition, it arrived on the market during the period when the Dutch elm disease was wiping out many American elms in urban areas, and the honey locust, to a degree, replicated the elm’s desirable vase-shaped growth habit.
Honey locust is an extremely adaptable tree species that does fine in dry, compacted, drought-prone, restricted urban sites and has been heavily used as a street tree. It’s appreciated for its fine compound leaves with tiny leaflets that are easily cleaned up in the fall. The cultivars generally don’t mature over 50 feet in height, though there are Colorado state champions that have grown more than 30 feet higher than that! The ‘Sunburst’ cultivar is prized for its brilliant yellow new spring growth, which stands out in the landscape. Even later in the summer, it retains a distinctive yellow-green color. A green-leafed sister cultivar, ‘Shademaster,’ is more common on the campus and can be seen in the parking lot “islands” east of Loyola and O’Connell Halls, where the uniform growth habit of this clonal cultivar is well demonstrated.