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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.

What’s blooming?  Red silk-cotton trees

March 01, 2012

What's Blooming

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bombax entire treeText and photos by Donald R. Hodel, Environmental Horticulture Advisor, University of California Cooperative Extension

Bombax ceiba, commonly known as the red silk-cotton tree, is a large, briefly deciduous tree occurring in warm monsoon forests in southern Asia. The Arboretum has the only two flowering specimens in the U. S. outside of Florida and Hawaii. The tree is famous for its large, showy, six-inch flowers with thick, waxy, red petals that densely clothe leafless branch tips in late winter and early spring. Widely planted and highly revered from India to southern China, it is unusually handsome and ornamental and has many uses. Known as the semal tree in India, a gummy secretion is obtained from the bark and sold as semal gum for medicinal use. The cottony fibers in the fruits are a substitute for kapok and used to stuff mattresses, pillows and cushions. The fleshy sepals of young flowers are cooked and eaten as a vegetable. The soft wood has been employed for matches and tea boxes while the fibrous inner bark makes suitable cordage. The tree is so highly revered that, according to Chinese historical records, the King of NamYuet, Chiu To, gave one to the emperor of the Han Dynasty in the 2nd century BC. The Arboretum’s two specimens put on their colorful, show-stopping display from February to April.

 

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