African Tulip Tree

When we first started buying plants for our container garden we saw this tree in full flower in a nursery in Pacific Beach. We had never heard of it, but the nursery owner assured us it was a hardy, if somewhat unusual, tree for this area and we would have no trouble rearing it in a large container. We were looking for a "showy" tree to fill an empty corner, so for $125 it was ours. The nursery delivered it to our condo, and even planted it in the plant pot for us when they got there. It looked great.

After about a week, I noticed the leaves turning yellow, then brown, then falling off in great numbers. This was followed by the large orange tulip-like flowers, until two weeks later it looked almost bare. I decided to ask the nursery what was wrong, so I gathered a bunch of leaves together and zipped them securely in a ziploc bag, and off I went. "Well, it's obvious", they told me, "too much water". Wow, could this be the result of too much water? It was late August and everything else was drinking water at an amazing pace. Eventually, it was completely bare and looked like it had died. I decided to throw it in the dumpster when I had time to move it, but then we had some fairly heavy rains and the whole area became waterlogged, so it ended up sitting in a pool of water for the next two months.


Except, it didn't die. In about March, I noticed buds on the bare branches, which turned into leaves, and flowers followed in the summer. It has never completely lost all its leaves since then, and I now think it was in shock from the move. I remembered all this today because when I was out in the yard I saw some new buds forming (in January???) and it looks like more flowers are coming.




These trees grow in abundance in Hawaii, especially on the way to Hana, which I guess is pretty wet, so it's not always sensible to follow the advice of "the experts", and in future I'll just be more patient and see what happens.