Logwood

Value to bees

Nectar

Very high

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

Worked heavily during the flow. Caribbean beekeeping now runs entirely on Africanized stock, which arrived through the region from the 1980s.

Worth knowing

An excellent dry-season nectar source across the Caribbean.

Flowering

In flower

January to April (northern hemisphere)

A dry-season flow, and Jamaica's main honey crop.

When nectar flows

Generous, and the mainstay of Jamaican honey production.

Year-to-year variation

Reliable in the dry season. Hurricane damage is the principal risk.

What it does to the honey

Contributes a light floral sweetness with a faint caramelised note — considerably paler and more delicate than the tree's name suggests.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun on poor, dry, often limestone soil, and tolerant of periodic waterlogging. It thrives on ground with little other use.

Size

5-15 m tall, often crooked and multi-stemmed.

Native range

Southern Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. Naturalised widely in Jamaica, Cuba and the Caribbean, where it was planted for dye.

Suits

Large gardens, Hedgerow

• Spiny and vigorous, and used as a stock-proof hedge across the Caribbean.
• Tolerates poor limestone ground where little else will grow.
• Frost-tender and unsuited to temperate gardens.

What it looks like

A small spiny tree with a fluted irregular trunk, small compound leaves, and dense sprays of fragrant pale yellow pea flowers followed by flat papery pods.