Ailant honey plant description, properties, application and distribution 

Ailantus honey plant is the highest tree from the genus Ailanthus.

Ailanthus is originally from China, but ailanthus honey plant is widely cultivated in Europe and North America, where it is used in protective afforestation, industrial planting, and landscaping. On the territory of Russia, it is found in the Crimea, in the North Caucasus, Astrakhan, Vologda and Rostov regions. Ailant is also widespread in Moldova, in the south of Ukraine. It grows well in the states of Central Asia, it is widely distributed in the countries of the Balkan Peninsula, Bulgaria, Romania and others.

Content

• Description of the honey plant ailanthus
• Ailant as a honey plant
• Aylanthus honey plant in protective afforestation
• Ailant honey plant in landscape design
• Economic importance of ailanthus honey plant
• Ailanthus wood

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Description of the honey plant ailanthus

Ailanthus honey plant is a tree that reaches a height of 25-30 meters. The bark of the ailanthus is gray, thin, in adulthood the bark reaches 2 cm in thickness.

Ailanthus shoots are long, yellowish brown, smooth, shiny. The kidneys are alternate, up to 3 mm long, hemispherical in shape, with two grayish brown scales.

Leaves of ailanthus are pinnately compound, alternate, up to 1 m long, have from 13 to 25 leaflets. The leaflets are ovate-lanceolate in shape, the leaflets are up to 12 cm long and 2-4 cm wide, on small petioles, the leaflets are entire, the leaves are green on the upper side, everything is bluish-green on the underside. If you touch them, they emit an unpleasant odor.

Ailanthus flowers are small, greenish in color, bisexual and staminate, flowers are collected in panicles 10-20 cm long, Ailanthus blooms in June-July.

Ailanthus fruits are oblong elliptical lionfish, pointed at both ends, light yellow in color, with an orange-red tint. They are 3-5 cm long and 1 cm wide, with one round seed in the middle. Ailanthus fruits ripen in October-November, hang and disperse throughout the winter and spring.

The root system of ailanthus is superficial, very strongly developed, easily forms shoots from the roots.

On the southern coast of Crimea, it can reach 100 years of age. At the age of 80, it reaches 25 m in height, 80 cm in trunk diameter and 20 m in crown diameter.

Ailanthus as a honey plant

Ailanthus as a honey plant blooms in May - June, during flowering ailanthus attracts many bees. The nectar productivity of one flower is from 2.5 to 3.1 mg with a sugar content of 45-51%. The honey productivity of an ailanthus from an average tree up to 12 m high during the flowering period is 8-10 kg of honey.

According to Romanian researchers, the honey productivity of ailanthus is more than 300 kg/ha.

In Dagestan, the highest ailanthus honey plant grows in wastelands, on sands, on dry rocky slopes, ailanthus as a honey plant blooms in June for 10-12 days. Its flowers are abundantly visited by bees from 5.30 in the morning and visit until 19.30 in the evening. The bees also collect nectar from the ailanthus in cloudy weather.

Ailanthus honey plant in protective afforestation

Ailant honey plant is a light-loving, very fast growing tree, at a young age it grows up to 1 m per year, and the annual growth of shoots can reach 3 m.

Ailant honey plant is not picky about the soil, it can grow quite well on washed-out loams, rocky slopes, on sands and other infertile soils.

Ailantus honey plant is drought-resistant, it is able to tolerate not only atmospheric drought, but also soil drought. At the same time, it is resistant to slight salinization of the soil.

Ailanthus is not resistant to frost, so it cannot quickly move north, but gradually it acclimatizes and slowly moves north and can even be found in the central regions of European Russia. In Ukraine, it quite calmly reaches Kharkov and Sumy.

Due to its unpretentiousness and ability to form a large number of root suckers, the ailant honey plant is used to fix the slopes of ravines, to fix the slopes, to fix the sands.

Ailant honey plant was widely used to create soil-protective forest belts on chestnut solonetsous soils.

Ailant honey plant is considered one of the best breeds for afforestation in the lower zone up to 1200 m above sea level of mountain slopes in Central Asia. Experimental plantings carried out in Central Asia, the joint cultivation of ailanthus and white acacia showed that the root offspring of these crops fasten the slopes well and at the same time create almost impenetrable thickets.

Because of the ability of ailanthus to give off an unpleasant odor, it is used to create green umbrellas. Because the smell emitted by ailanthus repels harmful insects from animals.

The advantages of ailanthus, due to which it was introduced into the culture, is its disadvantage.

From cultivated plantings, it can spread and grow wild. Due to its ability to form root offspring and herbicidal properties, it can gradually crowd out native species. For this reason, in 2014 it was included in the register of regulated non-quarantine pests on the territory of the Russian Federation.

List of quarantine objects.

Ailanthus is recognized as an invasive species in Ukraine and Bulgaria.

Aylanthus honey plant in landscape design

Ailantus honey plant is an ornamental tree, ailanthus has a slender trunk, with beautiful smooth bark, it has huge leaves, like a palm tree and caps of orange-red fruits. This gives the tree a particularly attractive appearance. For this reason, ailanthus is very often used in single plantings, in parks, squares, and gardens. For the purposes of landscape design, decorative forms of ailanthus are distinguished, such as white variegated, red-fruited, weeping and other forms.

Economic importance of ailanthus

The ailanthus honey plant is a very fast-growing tree, therefore, ailanthus plantations are created abroad with short felling rotations in order to obtain a large amount of ailanthus wood. At the same time, more wood raw material for cellulose is obtained from ailanthus than from other tree species, which increases the yield of cellulose. Cellulose obtained from ailanthus has a light color, which makes it easier to bleach.

In plantations, the ailanthus at the age of five reaches 10 cm in diameter, the felling of trees is carried out at 40-50 years. Wood is used to burn coal, for construction needs, and also for the paper industry.

In industrial plantations in some countries, felling is carried out when the trees reach 6 m in height and the trunk thickness is 15-20 cm.

Due to its rapid growth, unpretentiousness to growing conditions and the ability to produce rapidly growing root shoots, it is possible to use ailanthus for plantation cultivation in the southern regions, to obtain firewood and wood for other purposes. So, in favorable conditions of Central Asia, on slightly saline soils, at the age of three, trees reached a height of 10-12 m and 6 cm of trunk thickness.

In its homeland, ailanthus is used to feed the ailanthus silkworm.

Flowers, young shoots, young bark, mature fruits are used in folk medicine.

Ailant is a good honey plant, which is important for the southern regions.

Ailanthus wood

Ailanthus wood is annular-porous, with a wide sapwood of light yellowish and yellow-gray color with greenish veins, a shiny heartwood. Annual rings are usually wide, distinctly different due to the accumulation of large pores of vessels in spring wood. The medullary rays are numerous, narrow and shiny. In the center of the wood core, there usually remains a non-lignified core with a diameter of up to 1 cm.

The physical and mechanical properties of ailanthus wood are quite high. The volumetric weight varies from 0.56 to 0.68. The strength of ailanthus wood is 515 in compression along the fibers, and 955 kg/cm2 in static bending. The end hardness of ailanthus wood is 546 kg/cm2. Ailanthus wood is very elastic, durable and is used in carpentry, as well as for the manufacture of pulp, paper, fine carvings, matches and box containers.