Native from Pennsylvania to the Southeast, or perhaps only in North Carolina. Spreading from cultivation to roadsides, bluffs, old farm sites, and such places. First collected in 1884 in Kent Co.

This is a smaller tree than Robinia pseudoacacia, and the flowers are a paler pink than those of the shrubby R. hispida.

A specimen of Robinia neomexicana A. Gray, a frequently cultivated small tree from the western US, was collected in Houghton Co. in 1976, with the note that it "reproduces well by suckers in Houghton." It is probably not fully established outside of cultivation. It has rose pink flowers, deeper that those of R. viscosa, and lacks both warty glands and stiff, spreading hairs on the branchlets.