|
|
Plant of the Week
Golden Raintree
Latin: Koelreuteria paniculata
I know it’s politically incorrect to develop a fondness for foreign plants,
but I can’t help myself. The golden raintree is one of those introduced plants
that has no counterpart in the native American flora, and our gardens would be
less beautiful if it were ever to be excluded from our floral lexicon.
Golden raintree is a mid-size flowering tree that usually reaches 30 feet tall
and wide with golden yellow flowers produced from early June through late July,
depending on the flowering characteristics of the individual seedling.
The flowers of golden raintree are individually small to a half-inch across with
four petals, each bright gold and marked at the base with a cinnamon colored
blotch. The flowers are borne in large panicles up to 18 inches long and 12
inches wide with hundreds of blooms open at any given time on the panicle.
The first flowers to open are all male flowers, but as flowering commences,
female flowers open and, upon successful pollination, the two-inch long inflated
seed pods develop. Each seed pod has three sections and resembles a Chinese
lantern in general shape. In the summer, pods are lime green in color. But as
fall approaches, they turn a shopping bag brown and hang on the tree until late
winter.
Many consider the seed pods as attractive as the flowers.
Golden raintree, as a member of the soapberry family, has compound leaves with
13 to 19 leaflets per leaf. Like many members of this family it is adapted to
dry difficult sites. It is winter hardy as far north as Chicago. It is usually
low branching and develops a round head at maturity. The golden raintree made
its way to the West from Beijing about 1750 because of the efforts of a French
Jesuit priest named Pierre Nicholas d’Incarville (1706-1757). D’Incarville,
after whom the hardy gloxinia (Incarvillea sinensis) is named, was one of the
early missionaries sent to China where he arrived in 1742 to begin the Christian
transformation of that land. His efforts were largely met with indifference by
the Emperor’s court until a French botanist sent him seeds of sensitive plant,
Mimosa pudica.
The movements of this touch-sensitive plant delighted the Emperor, and
d’Incarville was given seeds of some common north China plants including mimosa,
tree of heaven, oriental arborvitae and others.
The golden raintree seeds made their way to St. Petersburg Russia via a
three-year long camel caravan where botanists promptly put them on a shelf and
ignored them for 20 years. Finally, in 1771, the dried plant specimens were
examined and the seeds germinated. The tree was named after a German botanist
named Joseph Koelreuter who was one of the first botanists to scientifically
study plant hybridization. The tree was introduced into the United States by
Thomas Jefferson who received seeds from Madame de Tesse, a correspondent from
France.
Golden raintree is an ideal tree for areas where root room is limited and living
is hard. It is often used as a tree in small traffic islands in the middle of
parking lots and similar tough spots. It will get larger in better sites but
does not seem the least bit fussy about where it grows, so long as it has
sufficient drainage. It is somewhat difficult to transplant so it is usually
better to secure container grown plants from nurseries. It has no serious
disease or insect problems.
By: Gerald Klingaman, retired
Extension Horticulturist
- Ornamentals
Extension News -
June 23, 2000
Back to Archives E - H
Back to Archives Q - T
|
