My chickens love this leaf... what is it?

[jeremy]

if it's not a locust and not a mimosa... and you can't seem to kill it off...

maybe it's an alien tree. brought here to destroy all earth-things, starting with your flock! oh no!

 

[dancingbear]

Not a mimosa. The leaves on the mimosa are that oblong shape, but each frond has, instead if the long leaf on each side, another stem with smaller leaves opposite each other.
Here's a good pic of a mimosa, showing both leaves and flowers:

Do all varieties of locust have toxic leaves? I know honey locust has edible seedpods, and some others do not.

 

[ERnoleGuy]

digitS' :

. . . to throw a wet blanket on the prospect of feeding black locust to your chickens:

In Diseases of Poultry, editor Y. M. Saif. page 1149, under phytotoxins: "Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) Part of Plant. Leaf. Signs and Lesions. Depression and paralysis; hemorrhagic enteritis."

There's lots of evidence of locust poisoning horses.

Here's what the Canadian Poisonous Plants Information System says about black locust: "Notes on poisoning:

Chickens were poisoned after ingesting leaf material. Degenerative changes in the liver and kidney occurred. A toxic phytohemagglutinin extracted from the plant caused fatty degeneration of the liver and death in chick embryos, at doses of 0.25-2.0 mg per egg (Kingsbury 1964, Cooper and Johnson 1984)."

I vote for Mimosa . . . don't know about its toxicity, if any. UCDavis and the ASPCA cover a lot of landscape and house plants and don't list it as toxic.

Steve

Well thank goodness it definitely isn't a black locust. I really don't think it is a honeysuckle locust or a mimosa either. Like I said, I ate one and it tasted pretty good. Good enough to consider putting it on a salad. No bitterness or anything. LOL. Seriously. I'll check out the ASPCA & UCDavis to see what I find. Thanks for the direction.​

 

[fla_native]

I just realized the you are in ST Pete....its gotta be either Mimosa or Poinciana.
I vote mimosa.

 

[wegotchickens]

I know Mimosas are extraordinarily hard to kill off. Knew someone who did battle with a stand of them for YEARS!

Do you have a county Ag agent? Get them to help you identify it before you use it in a salad

Just in case...

 

[NotTheMomma]

Try paradise tree. Does it stink?

 

[ChooksChick]

I went through all of the varieties of Mimosa in my 20# book and didn't see any that were quite right- the leaves, in general, were a pointier, smaller type.

I'm not really sure what it could be, otherwise...Kansas is a far cry from Florida in indigenous plants!

ETA: You can take a leaf and flower into a local plant nursery and get an answer pretty quick- that's what I've done in the past.

 

[lmblackburn]

maybe a kentucky coffee tree...it's the double compound leaves that make me think this

 

[CloggingChicken]

I grew up in Florida and at first thought a mimosa. The white flowers you mention are not typical of a mimosa though, they are typically pinkish. The leaves seem larger than the typical Florida mimosa. There are hundreds of mimosa species so it is possibly one of those oddballs that shows up.
Second to the mimosa would be a poinciana as they show up in the St. Pete area. Try googling white poinciana and see if it looks familiar. They have fewer flowers and the pictures may match what you have seen.
I also checked and found that there is a mimosa relative tree named Albizia that may have found it's way to you, although I don't remember ever seeing any in the area.
Just my two cents.

Bill

 

[ERnoleGuy]

Quote:
Man you guys are getting closer and closer

I looked up both the poinciana and the abizia. Those are so close, but I still think it's different because of the way the leaves look. Different shape, larger leaves (like you said), spaced more apart. They start out a solid green, and then turn more and more yellow as they age. There are hardly any flowers on it right now, but the ones I did see look like this:

This is NOT MY TREE. It is a representation of what the flowers look like on mine though.

This is not my tree. Just for reference.