Thinking about flowering trees

[Pip]

I've definitely decided I need another shade tree in my back yard to improve the environment for my humidity loving palms by taking some of the sting out of summer and early autumn sun. I love Jacaranda and they are so easy to find but I am torn I'd like to try a Stenocarpus sinuatus or Queensland fire wheel tree but they grow super slow to begin with, I'm not sure if it would achieve my goal fast enough. Another tree under concideration is an old fashioned Magnolia grandiflora not any of the dwarf forms. Bauhinua purpurea is a possibility too as is Ceiba speciosa. There are a few others I frequently think off but I'm interested in what other people might suggest. The tree will be viewed not just from the ground but the second story balcony/deck interesting foliage and/or flowers are important characteristics. Thd closest trees other than palms are Albizia julibrissin.

[Monòver]

If you want a fast and big tree, Tipuana tipu.

It has yellow flowers and in a few years it will make good shade.

The only one bad thing is it will lost the leaves every winters.

[Kostas]

Stenocarpus won't ever get to be a good shade tree as it doesn't want to spread much and gets too thick for palms to penetrate through easily. It does is a very beautiful tree though for filling a narrow gap.

Castanospermum australe is a very beautiful alternative, not very fast but spreads nicely eventually and should make a nice tall canopy tree. It is not as spreading as Tipuana tipu or Delonix regia for example as its a rainforest canopy tree.

Pachira is also an interesting tree if your climate supports it, and so are Indian mangoes which get to be truly huge and spreading trees. Guatemalan avocado grow to be huge, spreading trees as well.

All the trees i mentioned are evergreen, which is generally a plus when growing understory plants which hate the changing light conditions provided by deciduous canopy. You will find Albizia jullibrissin is a very messy tree that covers all understory plants with a sticky substance and mold. Really messy. And deciduous.

[Really full garden]

Be careful with Jacaranda.I find it is a very brittle and weak tree losing large and small branches every year.It is all so leafless for a time.

[Monòver]

Pachira is a beatiful alternative, but in mediterranean climates it is not fast and it will lost every leaves when the winter is finishing.

This is my small Pachira and the flower.

[SailorBold]

I'd say African Tulip tree... really spectacular...Spathodea campanulata

[Pip]

I'd say African Tulip tree... really spectacular...Spathodea campanulata

Yes Spathodea campanulata is a tree I absolutely love. I've never seen one growing here in Adelaide but I have seen quite a few in Sydney and I believe the African Tulip Tree weed further north.

[DoomsDave]

Bauhinia purpurea is beautiful, and a big messy monster. You'll get leaf fall, flower fall, and a huge crop of bean fall. It will grow from 30 cm to 2 M in one year, if you're warm enough and don't freeze much. Wood hard like stone, great in a fireplace, if you change your mind later.

They're aggressive and fast growing, and GORGEOUS blossoms up close. They really look like orchids.

An alternative to consider is Bauhinia X Blakeana, the Hong Kong orchid tree, which is a "mule" i.e., sterile. No seeds. Slower growth rate than purpurea, though not slow. 30 cm to 1 M in a year. Often grafted and trained. Had an old buddy who had one in his yard, hit about 11 M (the tree). Very nice.

Magnolias give heavy shade.

Ceiba speciosa! A tree to LOVE. And to hate. Love for the blossoms, the wierd appearance, leaves like marijuana, and that trunk covered with spines, unless you get a grafted spineless type.

HATE = enormous, lots and lots and lots of litter. Those pods full of cotton, great, if you're making bomb fuses. A pain otherwise. (Oh, maybe great kindling in the fireplace.) Trunk will reach a M across or more. Spongy wood, easy to cut down. Surface roots are everywhere (they planted some at law school; great to make out under).

Paloverde tree, desert type, not much shade, though.

Cassias! Scream! Yellow, pink, cream, crimson. (Sounds like the college colors for the Graduate School of Pornography.) Medium size, fast, messy, but manageable. Blossoms! Scream! There's a couple by the post office, and up the street from my little hovel.

Albizzia is hard to kill. You kill one of them, you're either dead or nearly so yourself.

Flowering gum trees! E. erythrocorys. Flakey bark, fuzzies for flowers, bees buzzing, head buzzing, Ruth Buzzy . . . E. ficifolia way too dense, but nice if you don't mind the Cloud Tree of Doom.

So many, have to think some more.

[Pip]

Keep those ideas comming Dave. For this particular location I'm not wanting any Eucalyptus, Angophera or Corymbia.

Jacaranda is high on the list due to ease of sourcing a decent sized plant. Many of the suggested trees so far are going to take some effort to find or be grown by seed.

Erythrina is another another that could be considered.

I love Castanospermum australe suggested by Kostus. I do like the way that tree flowers on old wood.

It doesn't matter what tree I do choose to plant they all are messy and could drop limbs.

[Riddler]

I've always wanted to try creating a canopy using Pencil Cedars (Polyscias murrayi) a NSW/QLD native.

Although the flowers are insignificant and I'm not sure if they would grow in your climate they

grow fast, have a relatively thin trunk that remains unbranched til high up and generally look neat.

[Pip]

Polyscias murrayi looks very interesting it probably would grow ok here just not reach the same hieght. The flowers aren't so awesome though.

[Kostas]

There are messy trees as in leaf and flower litter, and then there are messy trees as in sticky goo covering up everything underneath them. I love the first category. The second would only be tolerable in areas with no understory plantings

Another rainforest tree i like is Woolsia tomentosa. Not much of a flower i think but the tree itself is impressive.

If you like Jacaranda, do grow it. I think you won't regret it, its a nice tree and if not water or cold stressed, remains evergreen, with only some leaf thinning towards the flowering period. The canopy it provides is quite attractive and grows fast and big. Nice, fast growing, canopy tree. Don't bother to buy large, a half meter to 2meter tall sapling is plenty large enough to give you a tall and big tree in very few years with good water availability. It can't reach the quality of a primary rainforest tree species in terms of wood quality, leaf beauty and sturdiness, or flowers, but you get the satisfaction of fast growth and a big tree pretty fast. Primary rainforest species are the most impressive long term but take quite a few years before they reach a noteworthy size. Magnolia grandiflora and Castanospermum are truly amazing trees when huge. But till then, you have no canopy....

Interspacing fast and slower growers should give a nice canopy composition in the coming decade

[BigFrond]

An alternative to consider is Bauhinia X Blakeana, the Hong Kong orchid tree, which is a "mule" i.e., sterile. No seeds. Slower growth rate than purpurea, though not slow. 30 cm to 1 M in a year. Often grafted and trained. Had an old buddy who had one in his yard, hit about 11 M (the tree). Very nice.

Bauhinia X Blakeana is actually pretty fast. I have to cut back about 10 to 15 ft every year. This tree will look very nice if you cut back to the trunk every year. The new leaves are huge and so are the flowers.

[mnorell]

Another idea might be Peltophorum dubium. It's a spectacular tree, much cool-hardier than its almost identical twin brother, Peltophorum pterocarpum/inerme. It's from a (relatively!) cool area of Brasil and in the USA it adapts to Central and South Florida, Southern California, and probably a number of other climes where temps stay more or less above freezing (though it will take occasional dings of frost/freezing weather without much damage). It's a fairly large tree (a little larger than a mature Jacaranda) but it is quite spectacular during the warm season when it blooms. From a quick glance at Adelaide's Wikipedia page, it looks to me like your climate may be somewhat similar to Santa Barbara, California, but with a bit more rain around the calendar, which is a plus, and virtually no frost or freezes. A lot of tropical and near-tropical trees are grown in Santa Barbara, including Spathodea campanulata...which will surely sulk in your few colder winter months (defoliating) but they do fine in summer/fall in such a climate, even though they are generally much smaller and slower than they are in the tropics. Bauhinia x Blakeana (as noted above) should also do fine for you. Also a variety of Erythrinas will do very well for you. Try Erythrina latissima if you're looking for something really spectacular and unusual in that genus that none of your neighbors will have...but seed may be hard to find. And nobody mentioned the cool-tolerant Tabebuias such as T. umbellata (yellow), T. chrysotricha (yellow), T. ochracea (yellow) and the T. heptaphylla/T. avellanedae/T. impetiginosa (pink) complex.

[Pip]

Thanks for your suggestions Michael. Erythrina as a genus is very under used here I can only think of three gerdens near by that have them and 2 of those are on farms. I love Tabebuias my parents lived in Trinidad and Tobago a few years ago and raved on about these very spectacular yellow blossoming trees and took 1000s of photos of them. They are another tree virtually never used in this part of Australia. I might have to change that.

[mnorell]

Thanks for your suggestions Michael. Erythrina as a genus is very under used here I can only think of three gerdens near by that have them and 2 of those are on farms. I love Tabebuias my parents lived in Trinidad and Tobago a few years ago and raved on about these very spectacular yellow blossoming trees and took 1000s of photos of them. They are another tree virtually never used in this part of Australia. I might have to change that.

Just be careful in choosing your Tabebuia species. The tropical species for the most part really require a truly (lowland) tropical or warm, humid subtropical climate in order to grow and flower properly. The cool-hardy species have for the most part been separated out into a different genus (Handroanthus) by some taxonomist due to some technical details. Whether you buy into that latest "splitting" treatment is up to you, but the division does seem to rather neatly divide the more heat/humidity-seeking types from those that will do in cool subtropical and warm temperate areas. Unfortunately the species that one would find in Trinidad, such as Tabebuia caraiba (aka T. argentea, T. donnell-smithii, T. chrysantha, T. rosea, et al.), would probably only be good in the far north and northeast of Australia. Same goes for a few of the very tropical Erythrina (E. poeppigiana, E. indica), which do not thrive in cooler subtropical or warm temperate areas. Likewise, if considering the various orchid trees, do not be tempted by Bauhinia monandra, another very tropical (and very beautiful) species that will just fade away on you in your type of climate.

[Monòver]

I am agree with mnorell, Peltophorum dubium it is an amazing tree.

I saw a few growing in Spain.

It is big,fast and the yellow bloom is gorgeus.

[Pip]

My only issue with yellow flowering trees is that the native acacia trees that grow here put on a great display winter through spring they may not be leafless but they are completely covered by fluffy yellow blossom.

[Pip]

Erythrina indica grows here maybe much smaller/slower. There is a very nice specimen growing in Adelaide Zoo also the zoo has a grove of Erythrina caffra near thd big cats which are nice since they are winter flowering.

[Monòver]

My only issue with yellow flowering trees is that the native acacia trees that grow here put on a great display winter through spring they may not be leafless but they are completely covered by fluffy yellow blossom.

I undestand you, my house is surrounded for Acacia cyanophilla and every years, when the winter is finishing, everything are yellow, jajaja.

[Tropicgardener]

Stenocarpus sinuatus as mentioned is not a great shade tree to its upright habit but I can assure you that you can plant palms right up and around it..... I had a large one in a my previous garden. Was surrounded by palms and even had Calamus australis climbing it. Peltophorium pterocarpum is a native of here in North Queensland it would probably do ok for you, a very tough tree.

[Peter]

Tabebuia-just doesn't get better than that. Beautiful, long lasting flowers, mostly evergreen until it drops leaves and gets covered in flowers. Non invasive roots, beautiful in leaf as well, extremely drought tolerant, you can also grow lots of plants underneath it. Jacarandas are nice, but can be ratty looking for several months of the year, Ceibas are nice but are a huge tree and you can have problems with roots if it's close to the house. Bauhinias are messy and not the most attractive tree imho; Peltophorum is a good choice although not sure how readily available they are. My 2c...

[Pip]

Stenocarpus sinuatus is actually looking more appealing, sourcing one taller than 30cm might be tricky, they enjoyed a surge of popularity a few years ago I've only seen tiny specimens offered since. The purpose of the tree is only to take the sting out of mid to late afternoon sun. The location is close to my house so a tree with a more up right form may be better than say umbrella shape of Delonix regina. Although I've never seen a Delonix growing in Adelaide other than under glass at the botanic gardens I did order a small on online it should arrive Wednesday, I expect I'll keep it confined to a pot for a few years before planting it out. I think that the soil here would be to heavy wet and cold during winter for it too do any good.

[OverGrown]

pink tabebuia is as good as it gets

[DoomsDave]

There are many that are as good as it gets

But

Pinky T is sure one, amen

[Pip]

pink tabebuia is as good as it gets

I've been looking for them but no luck. The most spectacular flowering trees in the retail nurseries are the deciduous Magnolias at the moment.

[Kostas]

You will love Stenocarpus but you will have a long long wait to see it get impressive. At least 6years as even the slightly faster Caspanospermum takes as much to put on some size. My tallest Castanospermum is 5m tall now after 5-6years in the ground, still gaining height and trying to branch here and there but no canopy yet as i want it get a tall branching tree and has tall Melia azadirachta trees for competition.

I got myself a couple 4m tall Stenocarpus sinuatus 1-2years ago for 80Euro each and they were one of the best species i have gotten but are still pretty much the same. Rooting in well takes time and though they do are getting faster, they will still need at least 2 years before they start getting somewhat impressive. Castanospermum has a more elegant look overall, even though the pink-red new leafs of Stenocarpus are nice and the huge leafs this species can produce in the more shaded branches look like they came out of Jurassic Park.

I think Castanospermum will eventually give a nicer canopy than Stenocarpus but they both will eventually be very impressive trees

[Pip]

Melia azederach is a nice shade tree for a lawn. The berries they produce are an issue on hard surfaces becoming like ball bearings. They can become invasive too. The smell of their blossom is very welcome in early spring. In the older neighborhoods there are streets full of them.

[Kostas]

I know them pretty well, they are common here. They are not much of a problem but they are deciduous which to me is a problem as they offer no frost protection.

I am not growing Melia but the neighbouring properties have them. 3year old volunteer trees get to be 5-6m tall already in my area and by 5 years they have made a pretty dominant tree in the landscape with 20cm dbh trunk. My tall growing evergreen rainforest trees should eventually shade out and drive the Melia out of my property...My Magnolia grandiflora is already getting ready to emerge above the Melia canopy and has really halted its progress towards the side the Magnolia is.

Melia seedlings are a breeze to pull out from my rich soil and the seeds and fruits make a pretty good soil amendment. They do pierce large aroid leafs with their falling litter though...

[Riddler]

You could also consider Melicope elleryana, nice glossy green leaves and gets covered in pink flowers but

can have a fairly sparse canopy and the trunk is not particularly attractive. This one self seeded at my

parents house (Northern NSW), the birds are all over it when it flowers.

[waykoolplantz]

Can you not grow Ylang Ylang ...Cananga Odorata ? The smell is enchanting.

Why not a Baobob ?

[Kostas]

Thats an awesome one Steven! I forgot about it. Would love to grow it if only i found seeds...

[SailorBold]

Oh how I wish I lived in a warmer climate.... the things I would plant ! Here is a pic of 'Tree Bougainvillea' I found on the internet. Bougainvillea arborea. How spectacular... I would windbreak the property..

My deciduous Bougainvillea is very nice.. but what is also nice is that the leaves are a perfect shade of green.. very lush looking considering I never water it. I assume the tree type would be similar.

[DoomsDave]

Oh how I wish I lived in a warmer climate.... the things I would plant ! Here is a pic of 'Tree Bougainvillea' I found on the internet. Bougainvillea arborea. How spectacular... I would windbreak the property..

My deciduous Bougainvillea is very nice.. but what is also nice is that the leaves are a perfect shade of green.. very lush looking considering I never water it. I assume the tree type would be similar.

You have a Bogie in the high desert of NM?

How about a picture of that!

Seriously.

[SailorBold]

Oh how I wish I lived in a warmer climate.... the things I would plant ! Here is a pic of 'Tree Bougainvillea' I found on the internet. Bougainvillea arborea. How spectacular... I would windbreak the property..

My deciduous Bougainvillea is very nice.. but what is also nice is that the leaves are a perfect shade of green.. very lush looking considering I never water it. I assume the tree type would be similar.

You have a Bogie in the high desert of NM?

How about a picture of that!

Seriously.

yes ! Well I will state it is perennial and has grown phenomenally in its' second year. I don't know if it is going to survive long term but the underground-ish trunk must be getting very thick by now. I never really trained it.. and it is over 6 feet tall growing up iron bars in front of the window.

It has been blooming several months.. but very lightly. I read that they are phototropic? Is that right ? So maybe the show is about to start?

My apologies about the photo.. The color balance is off. Much more of a darker green than shown.

[DoomsDave]

Okay, so it gets frozen back each year.

My bogies in San Berdoo across from the AirBase of Doom died each winter for me.

Here, in La La Ha Ha, they take over.

[sur4z]

Phillip-

You obviously know your trees and I'm not sure if I can really add to the conversation; however, from experience I would not go with a Tabebuia if your area is subject to extreme weather events. Mine kept falling over or losing limbs in high winds so I took it out. I planted a D. leptocheilos in its place. Maybe consider a Magnolia or Dogwood.

-Peter

[Pip]

Thanks for your suggestions Peter a Dogwood tree would definitely be unusual not sure how much winter chill they need to flower well.I know they do ok at higher altitude, my garden would be 90 meters above sea level at the most. I have a lilac tree that I find frustrating as it only grows for a very short period during spring, summer heat stops growth then when the cool moist weather returns by the end of autumn and it begins to flower then the winter chill arrives and the blooms are ruined by rain it never looks like pictures in books or on the net. I'd like to give it the chop but it is one of the few plants my partner bought so I have to ignore it. Most Magnolias do ok here once they become established that can be challenging. I'm considering getting 'Exmouth' the tall old English cultivar of Magnolia grandiflora. Although I find it difficult to walk past 'Teddy bear' when I see one at a plant nursery.

A Judus tree might be an option.

[DoomsDave]

Ah, dogwoods! Cornus.

30 years ago I ran a retail nursery in Moreno Valley California and it was heavily populated by people from the eastern part of the U.S., or at least who had lived there in childhood. And they wanted dogwoods.

And the nurseries here don't sell them. The reason is that dogwoods have to have relatively high humidity, which dear old Mo Val (just east and up the hill from Riverside) does not have, all or almost all of the time. They just die.

There are a number of species native to the American west, but they do best in mountains.

That said, if you can locate a dogwood, plant it and see if it will grow.

[Kostas]

Melicope elleryana is also called dogwood, as are Buxus species. One more reason common names don't mean a thing

Melicope would be an awesome addition, though i still find Castanospermum or Magnolia grandiflora more appealing overall