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Going Out with a Big Bang—What’s Blooming

March 18, 2013

What's Blooming

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By Donald R. Hodel, University of California, and James E. Henrich, Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden

FurcraeaSome plants can grow for 50 years or more and never flower and produce fruits but when they finally do, their floral display can be spectacular as well as terminating the end of the plant’s life. One such plant is the Arboretum’s Furcraea macdougalii, a native of high-elevation dry forests in Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Puebla in Mexico, and it is in flower right now so don’t miss it. An agave relative, MacDougal’s century plant forms a slender trunk to 15 feet tall from an abruptly swollen base and is topped with a rosette of fleshy, narrow leaves to 7 feet long and 3 inches wide with curved teeth along the margins.  Looking like an agave with a trunk but growing in relative anonymity for many years, it really makes a name for itself when it shoots up a huge, terminal flower stalk that is as large as the plant itself and adds an additional 20 feet to the overall height. Although spectacular, this flowering event signals the end of the life of MacDougal’s century plant because the plant dies after flowering. However, miniature plants form on the flower stalk and these can be used for propagation to make new plants. The Arboretum has three plants, which it obtained in 1966 and only now, after nearly 50 years, are flowering. Surprisingly, all three plants are flowering simultaneously.  Catch this unusual display along the road at the base of the hill going up to Tallac Knoll.

Rare oaks and other species of Mexican trees excel at the Arboretum.

January 08, 2013

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quercus sartoriSeveral species of rare and/or unusual, evergreen oaks and other trees from Mexico that Donald R. Hodel, Environmental Horticulture Advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension in Los Angeles, had donated and planted at the Arboretum have grown exceptionally well, clearly demonstrating their adaptability to the climate in Southern California. Donald had collected seeds of most of the trees on an expedition to northeastern Mexico in 2001. (Quercus rhysophylla, right)

quercus sartoriHe germinated the seeds and grew the seedlings in containers prior to planting them out in an area informally known as the “Mexican Garden” west of the Plumeria collection on Tallac Knoll. Most were just a few feet tall and planted out from one- or two-gallon containers in 2005 and 2006, and they grew strongly and quickly, developing excellent habit and branch structure with little or no defects.(Quercus sartori, left)

Most of the oaks (Quercus) have attained 30 to 40 feet in height, have trunks five to eight inches in diameter, and are flowering and fruiting in five to seven years.

Platanus mexicana

Perhaps the most amazing tree, though, is a Mexican sycamore (Platanus mexicana), left, that after only six years in the ground is 54 feet tall and has a strong, straight bole and a trunk 13 inches in diameter! Typically fast-growing trees develop poor form and are plagued with branch defects but these Mexican oaks and sycamore have no such problems. These trees truly show outstanding horticultural and ornamental merit. Several other Mexican plants, including “woody” lilies like Agave, Dasylirion, and Furcraea, palms such as Brahea and Chamaedorea, and additional trees like Magnolia and Oreopanax, among others, round out the collection and help to make it an authentic Mexican forest.

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