They grow to impressive heights naturally and will bloom freely later in summer. They will develop fat green pods that hang low from the branches.

My husband, raised in the Beijing hutong, remember buying packets of these boiled pods as a childhood snack.

They didn't taste like anything much, he says, but they were cheap and fun to eat.

It was all part of growing up in old Beijing, a city that is slowly fading from memory.

These days, scholar trees are trimmed into gnarly-stemmed man-height bonsai and planted along roadsides. Their branches, trimmed and trained to look like knobby dragon digits, are forcefully curved back from the central trunk.

These bonsai versions are known as longzhuahuai, or dragon's claw locusts.

At this season, though, it is the honeyed black locusts that are still center-stage, and a huge basin of the flowers and buds is soaking in salted water in our kitchen.

Drained and air-dried, the flowers would be eaten several ways.

They will be dredged in a mixture of cornmeal and flour and then steamed. This slightly fragrant and chewy mixture will be eaten as a staple.

The rest of the flowers would be chopped and mixed with locust honey to enhance sweetness and scent and the mixture used to fill up dumplings and buns, and then steamed.

paulined@chinadaily.com.cn