Friday, January 22, 2010
Desert Landscaping - parental tree edition
The Texas ebony (Pithecellobium flexicaule) is a tree with low water needs. But careful it does have spines. And some cool seed pods.
Here's the Palo Verde in back. Literally green stick in Spanish. In the second pic you can see the green trunk and branches. The third pic I included just because I liked it. It's looking up into the canopy. To me it looked like I was in some palo verde forest or something. Evidently there are two species native to Arizona, the Blue Palo Verde and the Foothill Palo Verde, being blue-green and yellow-green respectively. Anyone want to vote?
Again, what a difference some water makes. The tree-like plant is a Mexican bird of paradise and based on this blog post by Bill at designinginthedesert, I think its Caesalpinia mexicana, but who knows. It originally looked a lot like the sproutling in the second picture when I was about 17 or 18. It was a little volunteer that I used to water when I went out in the backyard and that tree is what resulted. It wasn't on any irrigation, but has obviously tapped into something.
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A couple neighbors have replaced their lawn with plantings that include palo verdes. The clone that's sold most out here seems to be 'Desert Museum'. So far they seem to be doing okay, less than a mile from the coast but hundreds of miles from where they originate. They seem to be adaptable trees. And cool-looking for sure!
ReplyDeleteI've run across a few Palo Verde trees in Los Angeles as well. While I don't know if they were species trees or selections, the reading I've done all extolls the virtues of 'Desert Museum'.
ReplyDeleteThe one or two that I have seen in native plantings fit in well enough.